The Best Map Colours for Printing (and Slides)

Updated 5 October 2026

The best map colours for printing are the ones that stay readable when the paper is cheap, the light is dim or the reader is colour-blind. Pick one strong colour for your places, a quiet map behind it, and check the result in greyscale before you print.

Start with the job: paper, screen or projector

A map on a phone can use bright, saturated colours because the screen glows. Ink on paper cannot. Printers mix cyan, magenta, yellow and black, and the very bright blues and greens you see on a monitor often come out duller. A projector does the opposite: it washes out pale colours, so delicate pastels vanish across a room. Decide where the map will be read first, then choose colours to suit.

For paper, the Map Studio view called Light is usually the best base. It is pale and calm, so your markers and shading do the talking and you use far less ink than a full-colour satellite image.

Five rules that make a map readable

One loud colour, everything else quiet. If every marker is bright, nothing stands out. Use a single strong colour for the places that matter and soft tones for the rest.
Contrast beats beauty. Dark markers on a light map, or light markers on a dark map. Mid-tone on mid-tone is hard to read, especially in a small print.
Limit your colours. Five or six categories is the practical maximum. After that readers stop matching colours to the legend and start guessing.
Use shape as well as colour. Pins, circles and squares give you a second way to tell groups apart, so the map still works in black and white.
Keep shading light. When you highlight a country or a city, lower the shade strength so roads, coastlines and labels stay visible underneath.

Colour pairs that work

Blue and orange. The safest pair for almost every kind of colour vision, and clear in greyscale because one is dark and one is light.
Navy and yellow. Strong contrast on Light or Terrain maps. Good for a single highlighted area.
Dark red and teal. Distinct on paper and on screen, and still different when printed in grey.
Purple and green. Fine for a third category when the first two are blue and orange.

Colours to avoid

Red next to green is the classic mistake. Many people cannot tell them apart, and they print to almost the same grey. Pale yellow on a white page disappears, and a fluorescent green or pink looks muddy once it is converted for print. On a Satellite map, avoid green markers over fields and forests, and blue ones over water.

Print resolution without the maths headache

Printers like about 300 pixels per inch. An A4 page is roughly 8.3 by 11.7 inches, so a full-page print needs close to 2,500 by 3,500 pixels. PinCountryMap makes this easy: choose Print quality (3x) and the image is three times the size of what you see on screen. A map that is 1,200 pixels wide on your screen becomes 3,600 pixels wide, which fills a 12 inch wide print at 300 pixels per inch. For slides, High quality (2x) is plenty.

The Print layout options in the Studio can set the page shape for you, including A4 and A3 in portrait or landscape, so the proportions are right before you download.

A quick print-ready checklist

Choose the Light view for paper and Satellite only when the surroundings matter.
Pick one strong marker colour, or a blue and orange pair for two groups.
Turn on a legend if you use more than one colour.
Turn the names off if the map looks crowded, or use Auto-arrange and drag the stragglers.
Zoom to the area you need, choose Print quality and download.
Print one test page. Look at it in daylight and, if you can, again in greyscale.

Common questions

Will the colours on paper match my screen?

Not exactly. Screens use light and printers use ink, so expect bright colours to look a little softer on paper. A test print is the only way to be sure.

Does the image come as CMYK?

No. Downloads are standard RGB images, which every print shop and office printer can handle. If a professional printer needs CMYK, they can convert it, and choosing slightly deeper colours helps the result.

What is the best colour for one highlighted country?

A medium blue or a warm orange on the Light view reads well on paper and on slides. Keep the shade strength moderate so borders and names stay visible.

Ready to try your own? Open the map tool. For more ideas, see how to highlight a country and its cities or create a shareable itinerary map.