Why is my printer printing blank pages?

On a laser, blank pages almost always come down to four things: protective packaging still on a new cartridge or drum, sealing tape left in place, a cartridge that isn’t seated properly, or a faulty new consumable. On an inkjet it’s usually clogged nozzles. Each one takes under five minutes to check.

Start here, in this order

1. Check the display for an error message. Brother’s own troubleshooting starts here, then has you print a settings list to test the machine’s own output rather than the job you sent.
2. Open the front cover and pull the cartridge. On Brother machines you remove the drum and toner as one assembly. Look for orange protective packaging. Brother lists “remove the orange protective material from the drum unit and toner cartridge assembly” as the first documented cause of completely blank pages (Brother support).
3. Look for sealing tape. Canon names this outright: “The toner cartridge was installed with the sealing tape still attached.” The fix is to pull the cartridge and remove the tape (Canon manual).
4. Reseat the cartridge. HP’s image-defect table for blank pages says to make sure the cartridge is installed correctly, then to print with a different cartridge (HP user guide, PDF).
5. Ask when it started. If blank pages began the moment you installed a new toner cartridge or drum, Brother’s documented conclusion is that the new consumable is the problem and needs replacing. If it didn’t start with a new consumable, Brother says the machine needs service.

If it’s an inkjet

Blank or faint output on an inkjet is usually nozzles, not an empty cartridge. Canon documents the mechanism: air enters the ink tube over time, and nozzles dry when the printer sits unused. Print a nozzle check pattern from Setup > Maintenance > Nozzle Check, then run head cleaning if the pattern has gaps, and deep cleaning if one pass doesn’t fix it (Canon). HP’s equivalent is the diagnostics page: print it, look at the blue, magenta, yellow and black boxes, and clean the printhead if any box has streaks or gaps.

Things that look like a cartridge problem and aren’t

• The wrong paper size setting. Canon lists paper of a different size from the [Output Size] setting as a cause of blank output.
• Multiple sheets fed at once. Also on Canon’s list. Fan the stack and square it on a flat surface before reloading.
• A copy that comes out blank while prints are fine. That’s the scanner side. The original goes face down on the glass, face up in the feeder.
• A driver set to print in a color the page doesn’t contain, or a document whose text is actually white.

The honest part

One tip circulates everywhere and no manufacturer publishes it: rocking the cartridge to redistribute toner. It’s a reasonable thing to try on a cartridge that has gone faint, and it does nothing for a page that is completely blank. Brother, HP and Canon all say to reseat or replace instead. If you’ve checked the packaging, the tape, the seating and the paper settings and the page is still blank, the next step is a different cartridge, and after that it’s service.

If the cartridge turns out to be done, find the right one with the printer finder, or read the number off the old cartridge and search it. Every cartridge we sell is covered by a 90-day return window that includes opened cartridges that are defective, which is the case you’re in if a brand new one prints blank.