A PDF that looks colorful on screen prints in black and white — or with washed-out, incorrect colors. The frustrating part is that the problem isn't always obvious to diagnose. There are several independent causes, each with a different fix, and they're not related to the printer running out of color ink (though that's worth checking first).
Check the Obvious First: Ink and Printer Settings
Before investigating the PDF itself, rule out the two simplest causes. First, check whether the color ink or toner cartridges are depleted — a printer with empty color cartridges prints in black and white regardless of what the document contains. Print a test page from the printer's own menu (not from a computer) to confirm the printer itself is producing color output.
Second, check the print dialog settings before sending to the printer. Many applications have a "Print in grayscale" or "Black and white" option that overrides color output. In the print dialog, look for a Color or Quality section and confirm it's set to color printing, not grayscale or black-only.
Adobe Reader's Grayscale Print Setting
Adobe Reader has its own color settings that can force grayscale output even when the printer is capable of color. In the print dialog, click Advanced and look for a "Print Color as Black" option or a color management setting. If grayscale is selected here, it overrides the printer's color capability.
Also check Edit > Preferences > Accessibility in Acrobat/Reader. If "Replace Document Colors" is enabled with a black-and-white scheme, it may affect printing as well as on-screen display. Disabling this setting and reprinting often restores color output.
The PDF Itself May Be Grayscale
Some PDFs that appear to have color on screen are actually grayscale documents — the "color" you see is within the PDF viewer's rendering, but the file data itself contains no color information. This happens when a document is exported with grayscale settings, scanned in grayscale mode, or converted from a color document with color stripped during the process.
To check: in Adobe Acrobat Pro, go to Tools > Print Production > Output Preview. Switch the preview to show each color channel separately. If the document only has a grayscale (K) channel and no color channels, the file is grayscale — printing it in color won't add color that isn't there. The fix is to go back to the source document and re-export with color settings enabled.
Color Profile Mismatch
PDFs can contain different color spaces — RGB (for screen), CMYK (for print), or specific ICC profiles. A PDF Printing mismatch between the document's color space and what the printer expects can produce washed-out, incorrect, or unexpected colors even when the output is technically "in color."
In Adobe Reader's print dialog, look for color management options. Setting color management to "Printer Manages Colors" typically produces the most accurate output for standard office printing. "No Color Management" can cause colors to render incorrectly, particularly for documents that contain embedded color profiles.
Try Printing From a Different Viewer
If color prints correctly from one application but not from the PDF viewer, the viewer's color handling is the issue rather than the file or the printer. Open the PDF in a different application — Chrome, Preview on Mac, Foxit — and print from there. If colors appear correctly, the original viewer has a misconfiguration.
Chrome's PDF viewer often handles color printing reliably for straightforward documents. Open the PDF in Chrome (drag the file onto a Chrome window), press Ctrl+P, confirm color is selected, and print. This bypasses any color settings issues in dedicated PDF applications.
The Diagnosis Path
Work through the causes in order: confirm the printer has color ink and is set to color mode → check the print dialog for grayscale settings → check Adobe Reader's accessibility color settings → verify the PDF file itself contains color data → check color management settings → try printing from a different viewer. Most color printing problems resolve at one of the first three steps. If the PDF itself turns out to be grayscale, the fix requires returning to the source document — no print setting will add color data that isn't in the file.