Answered

Change Paper Color for Individual Pages in InDesign

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
December 4, 2025
1 reply
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There's a book I'm working on that I want to have printed on multiple paper stocks. Most of the book will be printed on white paper, but parts of it will be printed on black paper. So far I can only figure out how to change the paper color of all the document's pages, not just some of them. Is there a way to change the paper color for just some pages? And, how do I know what pages the other side of the piece of black paper will be on when InDesign? I plan on printing 2-up Saddle Stitch and it'd be nice if InDesign could calculate where the other half of the black paper will be so that I can factor that into how I design the book.

Also, it's important that the pages be printed on different stocks because there's a textural difference in addition to the color difference, so printing a black background with bleed and then trimming the paper isn't a viable option for me.

Correct answer Brad @ Roaring Mouse

This is not what that option is for. It purely just for previewing on screen what your document might look like on a color stock. It does not in any way add an object that prints.

Also, if you are not printing a white underlay on your black paper stock, this is all for naught.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Correct answer

Community Expert

This is not what that option is for. It purely just for previewing on screen what your document might look like on a color stock. It does not in any way add an object that prints.

Also, if you are not printing a white underlay on your black paper stock, this is all for naught.

G

Gregory_Lippert9770Author

Thanks for the help.

In that case, is there a way to preview the way InDesign will prepare the book for 2-up Saddle Stitch? That way I could skip the pages I want on the black stock and print them out seperately.

As for the black stock, it's not quite black, it's more of an almost black color. My plan was to print black on black because I want the effect to be subtle. I've seen people do this before, but never tried it out myself.

Brad @ Roaring Mouse

Community Expert

Printing Black on Black would work then. Regardless, there is no way to customize this paper color the way you want. What you might do is create a layer that has a "dark grey" box on it that you can turn off or configure not to print.

InDesign does have its Booklet printing option, and it would give you some sort of preview, but since you'd have to print your balck pages in 4 page signatures, I would just create a dummy (a small folded piece of paper into a signature and mark which pages are to be black stock, etc)

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