PDF Background Color or Image Not Printing
A PDF with a colored background or background image that looks correct on screen but prints with a white background has background graphics printing disabled in the printer settings. Here's the fix.
A PDF with a colored or patterned background that prints as a plain white page has "Print Background Graphics" or "Print Background Colors" disabled in either the PDF viewer's print settings or the browser's print settings. This is a deliberate default in most printing environments to save ink — but for documents where the background is essential to the design, it must be explicitly enabled.
Enable Background Printing in Acrobat Reader
In Acrobat Reader print dialog: there is no direct "print background" toggle — background elements in a properly structured PDF should print automatically. If the background is not printing, it may be set as a PDF background artifact rather than page content. Check: does the background appear if you print to a PDF printer (File → Print → Adobe PDF)? If the resulting PDF has no background, the original PDF's background is set as an accessibility artifact (meaning it is decorative and excluded from printing). In that case, you need to recreate the background as page content.
Enable Background Printing in Chrome
If viewing and printing from Chrome (the PDF is open in Chrome's built-in viewer): Chrome's Print dialog → "More settings" → check "Background graphics." Chrome suppresses backgrounds by default to save ink. This setting persists between sessions once changed. In Firefox: Print → "Print Backgrounds" option in the Page Setup dialog. This is the fix when you are printing a PDF directly from a browser window.
The Background Is an Artifact
PDFs tagged for accessibility often mark background colors and decorative images as "Artifacts" — content that is not part of the logical document and can be excluded from printing and screen reading. This is correct accessibility practice, but means the background does not print in some contexts. If you need the background to always print: use a PDF editor to mark the background as actual page content rather than an artifact, or flatten the background into the page content by printing to a PDF with backgrounds enabled.
Add a Non-Artifact Background
To add a background that always prints: use FixMyPDF Background Color to set a page background color. This writes the background as page content, not an artifact, ensuring it prints in all viewers and printers. For a background image, use the Add Image tool to place the image as a page object on a layer behind the text content.
Try Background Color Now — Free
Browser-based, private, and instant. No account or software required.
Open Background Color