Faded, Streaky, or Blank Prints? Fix Print Quality by Brand

Pages coming out faded, streaked, missing colors, or completely blank? Nine times out of ten this is ink levels or clogged nozzles — not a broken printer. The order of operations matters, and every brand has its own cleaning path and its own limits. Run them wrong and you'll burn through a fortune in ink.

The check order

Ink/toner levels first. Most blank or faded pages are simply empty cartridges. Check through the brand app or the printer panel's Estimated Ink Levels before you touch anything else.
Run a nozzle check / print quality check sheet to see which colors are missing or broken. Cleaning blind wastes ink; cleaning the one color that's clogged doesn't.
Run the brand's head-cleaning cycle (paths below) — and respect the repeat limits. This is where people go wrong: running cleaning cycles over and over doesn't help a dried head, it just empties the cartridges.
Alignment — only for blurred or misaligned text, not for missing colors.
Never turn the printer off mid-cleaning (Epson and Brother especially) or you can damage the head.

Cleaning paths and repeat limits by brand

HP Clean Printhead — three levels, don't overdo it

HP Smart app: select the printer > Printer Settings (or Advanced Settings) > Printer Maintenance / Print Quality Tools > Clean Printhead. Run Level 1 first, print the diagnostic page, then Level 2 if it's still bad.
Printer panel: Setup (or Tools) > Printer Maintenance or Tools > Clean Printhead > Continue. A test page prints after cleaning. If quality is still unacceptable, choose Clean Again for the next level (up to 3 levels).
Windows: Win+R > control printers > double-click the HP printer > HP Printer Assistant > Maintain Your Printer > Device Services > Clean Cartridges / Clean Printheads.
Limit: don't run more than 2–3 cycles in a row — cleaning uses a lot of ink. If it's still clogged, wait 30 minutes before running all three levels again.
Alignment: Settings icon > Tools > Align Printer. The printer prints a page — place it on the scanner glass per the on-screen instructions and touch OK.

Last resort only: power off, unplug, remove the cartridges (or the removable printhead), and wipe the nozzle plate and electrical contacts with a lint-free cloth dampened with distilled water only — no alcohol, no tap water. Let it dry 10–15 minutes, reinstall, and run the built-in cleaning again. HP warns that manual cleaning can damage the printhead if done wrong.

EPSON Head Cleaning, then Power Cleaning, then rest

Path: Home (if needed) > Maintenance > Head Cleaning, then press Start. You can't run a cleaning with an expended cartridge — replace it first.
Never turn the product off during a cleaning cycle or you may damage the head.
Print a nozzle check pattern after each cleaning and look for gaps.
Limit: if several cleanings don't help, run a Power Cleaning — stronger, uses more ink. If still no improvement after 3–4 cleanings, turn the printer off and wait at least 6–12 hours to let dried ink soften, then retry. After that, try a new cartridge for the problem color before contacting Epson.

BROTHER Clean each problem color — at least four times

Button models: press the INK key (or Menu > up/down to Ink > OK) > up/down to Cleaning > OK > choose BLACK, COLOR, or ALL > OK. Don't touch the print head while it cleans.
Touchscreen models: tap the Ink indicator > Cleaning > choose the color.
Tank models (DCP-T): Menu > Maintenance > Cleaning > OK > Black/Colour/All > OK > Normal/Strong/Strongest > OK > Mono Start or Colour Start. A stronger "Special" clean exists if several normal cleans fail (it needs the tanks more than half full — it drinks ink).
Brother's official rule: repeat the cleaning for each problem color at least FOUR (4) times, printing a Print Quality Check Sheet after the first clean and again after the fourth to compare.

CANON Escalate: Cleaning → Deep cleaning → System cleaning

Path: Home > Maintenance > Print head cleaning (touchscreen), or Setup > Maintenance > Print Head Cleaning.
Canon's manual gives you three escalating modes: Cleaning (faint print or foreign substances — least ink), Deep cleaning (no ink ejected at all, or Cleaning didn't work), System cleaning (Deep cleaning didn't work — uses a very large amount of ink, so only when needed). Select the ink group (All colors or a specific group), confirm Yes, then print a nozzle-check pattern.
The end of the line: Canon's manual says it plainly — if print isn't improved after System cleaning, the print head may be at the end of its service life, and you should contact a Canon dealer. On models with a user-replaceable head, that's a fix; otherwise it's terminal.

The genuine-ink note (all four makers agree): every manufacturer officially recommends its own cartridges and states that third-party or refilled ink can cause print-quality problems and cartridge-recognition errors — and that third-party-caused damage is excluded from warranty. Practically speaking, third-party carts are also the single most common cause of "cartridge not recognized" errors (Epson W-13 and friends).

When bad output is really an error code

If the printer also shows a code on its display, the problem may be deeper than cleaning:

HP "Ink System Failure" 0xc19a00xx — the verified fix sequence and how to tell if the ink system is genuinely dead.
Epson 0x97 — what it really means; a power-cycle either revives it or doesn't, and there's no in-between.
Brother "Unable to Print 4F" — the Brother error-code guide.

If the printer is offline rather than printing badly, that's a different problem — see the offline fix guide.

Sources

Quality issues that won't clear?

The free Unjammed diagnostic factors in your printer's model, age, and symptoms to tell you whether another cleaning is worth the ink — or whether the printer has reached the end of its useful life.

Run the free diagnostic