How Color Coverage on Documents Affects Your Business

As a Los Angeles business owner, you are concerned about the bottom line. Numbers are important to you. So when your copier rep tells you that you are going to have a contract that guarantees you 20 percent coverage, it is important for you to understand what this number means.

Right off the bat, it may appear as if he is saying that your contract guarantees you X amount of pages with 20 percent of those pages being covered in toner. However, that is not what the contract really means. In fact, a 20 percent coverage really means that your page can be covered with 5 percent of each of the four colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and the key color or black, giving you a total of 20 percent.

It is important to understand how these percentages work so that you can guarantee that your historical average for printing in full color does not exceed 20 percent and that your average for black and white printing does not exceed 5 percent. This could result in an up charge from your copier representative.