How to Print a Tattoo Stencil

There are three ways to print a tattoo stencil: on a regular printer and then trace or thermal-copy it, on an inkjet printer loaded with stencil ink, or directly on a thermal stencil printer. Whichever you use, the two things that go wrong most often are the size and the mirroring. This guide covers both.

Last updated: 14 November 2026

Option 1: regular printer (inkjet or laser)

You don’t need special equipment to start. Print the stencil on ordinary paper at actual size, then either:

• Trace it onto the top sheet of 4-ply thermal/hectograph stencil paper with a ballpoint pen. The purple carbon layer copies your lines onto the back of the top sheet. Leave Mirror off when printing for hand-tracing this way, because the carbon copy already comes out reversed.
• Photocopy-transfer: some artists put a laser print through a thermal copier. In that case print it un-mirrored too; the thermal machine handles the flip.

A regular printer is also the right choice for checking size and placement. Print on plain paper, hold it against the body and adjust before you make the real stencil.

Option 2: inkjet printer with stencil ink

Stencil ink cartridges (or refill ink) let an ordinary inkjet print a transferable stencil straight onto hectograph, tracing or plain printer paper. Because you apply the printed side to the skin, choose Mirror so the design reads correctly once transferred. Pick the stencil purple ink option so the on-screen preview matches what you’ll see.

Keep a dedicated printer for stencil ink. Mixing stencil ink and regular ink in one machine causes smearing and clogged heads.

Option 3: thermal stencil printer

Thermal stencil printers (often small portable units) burn the design onto thermal stencil paper with heat. There is no ink at all. They are the fastest and cleanest option if you make stencils daily. Most connect by USB or Bluetooth and print from a phone or computer. Print our PDF or PNG at actual size; most thermal apps let you set the mirror there, so leave Mirror off in our tool unless the printer app has no mirror setting.

Printing the right size, every time

A stencil printed at the wrong scale is the most common, and most avoidable, mistake. Our PDFs are built at true physical size, so the only thing that can change the size is the print dialog:

Every sheet has a 5 cm calibration bar in the bottom margin. Measure it before transferring. If it is 4.8 cm, your printer scaled the page by 96% and the tattoo will be 4% smaller than planned.

Printing a stencil bigger than one page

Sleeves, back pieces and thigh pieces rarely fit on A4 or Letter. When the size you enter is larger than the printable area of one sheet (the paper minus a 12 mm margin), the PDF automatically splits the design into equal tiles. It picks portrait or landscape, whichever needs fewer sheets. Each tile is labelled by row and column (A1, A2, B1…) and shows which sheet joins on each side. Trim along the crop marks, line the sheets up, and tape them on the back.

Step by step

1. Make and size the stencil. Create the stencil in the stencil maker and enter the final size on skin in cm or inches.
2. Choose mirror and ink colour. Tick Mirror if the stencil will be transferred face down (thermal and hectograph paper). Choose stencil purple if you print with stencil ink.
3. Download the PDF. The PDF is 300 DPI, laid out on A4 or US Letter, and tiled across sheets if the design is larger than one page.
4. Print at actual size. In the print dialog choose “Actual size” or 100% scale and switch off “Fit to page”. Measure the 5 cm calibration bar with a ruler.
5. Assemble tiled sheets. Trim each sheet along its crop marks, butt the edges together in the order shown by the sheet labels (A1, A2, B1…) and tape them on the back.
6. Transfer to skin. Run the print through a thermal printer or trace it onto stencil paper, apply stencil transfer solution to clean skin, press the stencil on and peel it off slowly.

Do you need to mirror a tattoo stencil?

Mirror it when the printed side touches the skin, as with stencil-ink inkjet prints and direct hectograph prints. Don’t mirror it when a machine or the carbon layer reverses the image for you (thermal copiers, hand-tracing on 4-ply paper), or when you only print a reference. The quick test: lettering must read correctly on the skin, so hold the printed stencil up to a mirror. What you see there is what will be transferred.