What Causes Colour Banding in Sublimation Prints?
Colour banding shows up as visible horizontal lines or stripes across your print, usually most obvious in areas with gradients or smooth colour transitions. Instead of a seamless blend from one shade to the next, you get distinct steps or bands of colour that ruin the finished product.
The frustrating thing about banding is that it can come from several completely different sources. A clogged print head, the wrong ICC profile, poor-quality paper, or even incorrect print settings can all produce banding, but each one looks slightly different and needs a different fix. Working through them one at a time is the fastest way to identify and solve the problem.
Cause 1: Clogged or Failing Print Head Nozzles
This is the most common cause of banding, especially on Epson EcoTank printers that have been sitting idle for a few days. When nozzles become partially blocked, they fail to lay down ink evenly, and you end up with thin lines running horizontally across the print where ink is missing.
Start by running a nozzle check from your printer's maintenance menu. This prints a test pattern that shows each colour channel as a series of lines. If you see gaps, broken lines, or missing segments in any of the colour blocks, you have a clogged nozzle. Run a head cleaning cycle and then print the nozzle check again. It sometimes takes two or three cleaning cycles to clear a stubborn blockage. If the nozzles still show gaps after three cleans, leave the printer overnight and try again the next day. Repeated cleaning cycles in quick succession waste ink without giving the cleaning solution time to work.
To prevent nozzle clogs from developing in the first place, try to print something at least every couple of days. Even a small test print keeps ink flowing through the nozzles and stops them from drying out. If you know the printer will be unused for a week or more, run a nozzle check before you start printing again.
Cause 2: Wrong or Missing ICC Profile
If your nozzle check comes back clean but you are still seeing banding, the problem may be your ICC profile. An ICC profile tells your printer how to translate the colours in your design into the specific ink and paper combination you are using. Without the correct profile, or with a mismatched one, the printer has to guess how to handle colour transitions, and the result is often visible stepping between shades rather than smooth blending.
This type of banding tends to look different from nozzle-related banding. Instead of thin missing lines, you will see broader bands or steps where one shade of colour abruptly changes to another, particularly in gradients. Skin tones, skies, and backgrounds with subtle colour shifts are where this shows up most clearly.
Make sure you have the correct ICC profile installed for your specific combination of printer, ink, and paper. If you bought a converted sublimation printer bundle, the ICC profile should have been included. Install it and select it in your print settings or design software. If you are using third-party sublimation ink, the ink supplier should provide a profile matched to your printer model.
Cause 3: Low-Quality or Wrong Paper
The paper you print on makes a bigger difference than most people expect. Quality sublimation paper has a specially formulated coating that absorbs ink evenly across the surface. Cheap or uncoated paper absorbs ink unevenly, with some areas soaking up more ink than others. This creates visible horizontal bands, particularly in areas of solid colour or gentle gradients.
If you have been using budget paper and seeing persistent banding that does not go away after cleaning nozzles and checking profiles, try switching to a proper sublimation paper designed for your ink type. The difference can be dramatic. The coating weight and quality vary significantly between brands, and this directly affects how evenly ink is distributed across the printed surface.
Check Your Print Quality Settings
This one catches a lot of beginners. If your printer is set to "Draft" or "Normal" print quality, it lays down fewer passes of ink to speed up printing. Fewer passes means less overlap between each row of dots the print head puts down, and those gaps between passes become visible as banding.
For sublimation printing, always set your print quality to "High" or "Best" in your printer driver settings. Yes, this slows down printing and uses slightly more ink, but the difference in output quality is significant. Draft mode exists for quick test prints and document printing where banding does not matter. For sublimation transfers that will be permanently pressed onto a product, you want every pass of the print head to overlap properly.
Paper Feed and Mechanical Issues
Occasionally, banding is caused by the paper itself slipping or feeding unevenly through the printer. If the paper feed rollers are dirty or worn, the paper can move in tiny jerks rather than smoothly, creating bands at regular intervals. This type of banding tends to be very consistent, with evenly spaced lines across the entire print.
Clean the paper feed rollers using your printer's built-in roller cleaning function. Make sure you are loading the correct number of sheets (do not overfill the paper tray) and that the paper guides are snug against the edges of the paper without being too tight. Fan the paper before loading to prevent sheets from sticking together, which can cause feed issues.
Troubleshooting Step by Step
If you are dealing with banding right now, work through these steps in order. First, run a nozzle check. If it shows gaps, clean the heads and retest. If the nozzle check is clean, check that you have the correct ICC profile installed and selected. Next, verify your print quality is set to "High" or "Best". Then look at your paper. If you are using generic inkjet paper or a very cheap sublimation paper, switch to a quality option and compare results.
If banding persists after all of these checks, it may also be worth looking at your source image. Very low-resolution images or designs with extremely subtle gradients can sometimes show banding that is actually present in the file itself, not caused by the printer. Open the image at 100% zoom on screen and check whether the banding is visible in the digital file before assuming it is a hardware or settings problem.
For related printing issues, have a look at our guide on how to fix lines on a print from an Epson EcoTank, which covers similar symptoms with EcoTank-specific solutions.