Where to Print for Free or Cheap Near Queen's University in Kingston

At some point in your Queen's career, you will need to print something urgently. Knowing where to go before that moment arrives saves you from discovering that the closest option is a 20-minute walk or that the library printer queue has 40 people ahead of you during exam week.

Free Printing on Campus

Stauffer Library

Queen's students get a printing credit allocation each semester through the university's print management system (currently through PaperCut). The exact allocation varies by year and program — check your student account or the library website for your current balance. Black-and-white pages cost roughly 10-15 cents per page against your credit; colour is more expensive. The allocation typically covers moderate printing needs; heavy users (printing every lecture slide set, all readings) will exhaust it.

Printers are on the main floor and several upper floors. During exam season, expect queues. Go early in the morning or after 8pm to avoid waits.

Douglas Library

Same print system as Stauffer, often with shorter queues because fewer students default to Douglas. If Stauffer is busy, Douglas is the better option during peak periods.

Faculty Computer Labs

Depending on your faculty, your department may have computer labs with printers that draw from a separate printing credit or are free for department students. Engineering, Computing, and Commerce all have department-specific printing resources. Check with your department's administrative office or student society about current access.

Off-Campus Cheap Printing

Staples (Bath Road and elsewhere in Kingston)

Standard black-and-white printing at Staples runs 12-15 cents/page, colour around 75 cents-$1/page. Good for large jobs where you'd exhaust your campus credit, or for printing on specific paper types. The self-serve kiosks are faster than waiting for staff assistance. Upload your file at the Staples website before going for the fastest experience.

FedEx Office (Princess Street area)

Similar pricing to Staples for standard printing. Better for large-format printing (posters, presentation boards) where Staples may have longer turnaround. Self-serve available 24 hours at some locations.

Kingston Print shops (local)

For thesis printing, bound reports, or anything requiring professional finishing, local print shops often have more competitive pricing than Staples for larger jobs. Ask for a quote — binding, specific paper weights, and finishing touches are often cheaper at local shops than big-box print centres.

Thesis and Large Document Printing

If you're printing a thesis or substantial bound document, Queen's library and campus resources may not be the right choice. Options:

• Campus Bookstore print services: Check whether the Queen's Bookstore offers binding and larger print jobs — some years it does, sometimes it changes
• Staples Bath Road: They handle bound documents and have specific thesis binding services, typically $30-60 for a full thesis including colour cover
• Online print services (Docucopies, Printingforless): For 50+ copies of a document, online bulk printing ships to Kingston and is significantly cheaper per unit than local options

Practical Tips

• Save your campus printing credit for the documents that actually need it — don't print every reading if you can read on screen
• Print 2-up (two pages per side) for readings and lecture notes to cut your page usage in half
• Check your print credit balance before exam season — running out during finals is a genuinely stressful experience
• PDF annotations and digital note-taking are worth developing as skills before you exhaust campus printing resources

Queen's Library Printing System Explained

Queen's University gives enrolled students a printing quota each semester through the library system. Black-and-white printing costs less per page than colour. Print jobs are released at any of the library printers by swiping your Queen's student card or entering your NetID. The printers in Stauffer Library, Douglas Library, and the Bracken Health Sciences Library all use the same queue system — send the job from any campus computer, release it at whichever printer is closest. When your quota runs out mid-semester, you can add funds through the IT Services account portal. Colour printing consumes quota faster — at roughly 4–5x the cost of black and white per page.

Reducing Your Print Volume

• Print 4-up for lecture slides — 4 slides per page cuts your page count by 75% and is still fully readable
• Print double-sided by default — enable duplex printing in every print dialog. This halves your physical page count for multi-page documents
• Annotate PDFs digitally — GoodNotes, Notability, and free PDF annotators do this as well as physical annotation. Students who print readings only to highlight them once and never look at them again generate significant unnecessary print costs
• Grayscale for colour source documents — if colour detail isn't required, set the printer to grayscale even for colour source files

Off-Campus Printing in Kingston

When campus printers are down or for larger jobs: Staples on Bath Road ($0.10–$0.15/page black-and-white, poster printing, binding), FedEx Office on Princess Street (self-serve terminals, later hours), and Costco Photo Centre for photo-quality poster prints. For thesis printing, Staples Bath Road and local independent print shops offer coil, perfect, and hardcover binding — allow 24–48 hours.

Scanning Documents for Free

The library printers double as scanners. Scanning to email or to a USB drive is free for Queen's students. The Stauffer Library and Douglas Library both have dedicated scanning stations. For high-volume scanning (digitizing old course notes, scanning lab notebooks), book a session at the library scanning station rather than using a printer/copier in a high-traffic area during peak hours.

Making a Printing Budget Work Through the Semester

Most Queen's students don't monitor their printing quota until they've run out of it. A simple practice: check your print balance at the start of each month through the IT Services portal and track whether you're on pace to make it through the semester without adding funds. The academic year is roughly 28 weeks of coursework. Your semester quota divided by 28 gives a weekly budget. Students who track this weekly spend are rarely surprised mid-March by a depleted balance; students who don't are almost always surprised at least once per year.

The most cost-effective printing approach for a Queen's student across a full degree is to default to digital annotation for readings, use 4-up double-sided black-and-white for lecture slides that genuinely benefit from being on paper, and reserve colour printing for actual graded submissions that require it. The math: a student who prints 80% fewer pages by digitizing readings spends perhaps 15–20 minutes per week in settings adjustments and file organization. That investment returns $100–$200 in saved printing costs per year and eliminates the anxiety of running out of quota during finals.

For large printing jobs — a design portfolio, research posters for a conference, a thesis — always get a price comparison between Staples on Bath Road and the Queen's print services before committing. The campus print system is optimized for individual document printing; high-volume or large-format jobs are sometimes cheaper at Staples or at independent Kingston print shops, especially when you factor in the service and binding options they offer.

International students who send documents home for administrative or visa purposes frequently need colour scans and certified copies. Campus scanning stations are free and produce high-resolution PDFs suitable for most official purposes. Using campus scanners rather than paying at a pharmacy or postal centre saves $2–$5 per scan — small individually, but meaningful across the multiple administrative submissions international students typically need throughout a year at Queen's.

Managing Your Queen's Print Quota Across a Full Academic Year

The Queen's library print quota resets each semester — fall and winter — which means managing it per-term rather than annually. Students who burn through their quota in the first six weeks of fall semester because of heavy assignment loads pay top-up costs during the calmer mid-semester period; those who pace their printing make it through without adding funds. The practical fix: check your quota balance in the second week of October and the second week of February. If you've used more than 40% of your quota in the first five weeks of an eight-week semester, you're ahead of pace to run out and should start reducing voluntary printing now.

The highest-volume printing periods at Queen's are the two weeks before each set of midterms and the two weeks before finals. Every other student is also printing heavily during these windows, which creates two problems simultaneously: quota depletion and printer queue congestion. Print course packs, study guides, and essay drafts during the two weeks before these crunch periods when the queue is short, not during the crunch itself when you're printing in competition with hundreds of other students.

For PDF annotation as an alternative to printing: Adobe Acrobat Reader (free) supports highlighting and text comments. GoodNotes and Notability are paid iPad apps widely used by Queen's students for handwriting directly on PDFs — the upfront cost ($10–$30) pays off within one year of reduced printing. Microsoft OneNote (free with your Queen's Microsoft 365 account) imports PDFs and supports annotation on any device. Any of these tools eliminates the printing cost for readings entirely — typically 40–60% of the average student's print volume.

A note on thesis printing: the Queen's library system is not optimized for thesis-quality printing. For final thesis submission copies (bound, professional-quality), use Staples Bath Road or a local Kingston print and binding shop. Book this at least one week before your submission deadline — same-week binding requests are sometimes possible but not guaranteed during April thesis season.