Guide · Updated July 2026

How to Print Address Labels at Home (Step by Step)

Printing your own address labels takes about fifteen minutes the first time and five after that. Here's the whole process — what to buy, how to get your addresses into shape, and the two printer settings that make the difference between crisp labels and a wasted sheet.

1. What you need

A sheet of peel-and-stick labels. Sold at any office-supply store, most grocery stores, and online. The classic choice for envelopes is the 30-per-sheet address size — see our label size chart if you're not sure which to buy.
Any home printer. Laser and inkjet both work; just buy the matching pack (it says laser or inkjet on the box).
Your address list — on paper, in a spreadsheet, or in your head.

2. Pick your label size

For holiday cards, invitations, and everyday envelopes, the standard Avery 5160 size (1″ × 2⅝″, 30 per sheet) is right for almost everyone. Bigger mailings — padded envelopes and packages — call for the wider shipping sizes, and there's a tiny 80-per-sheet size made for return addresses. The full chart compares them all.

3. Get your addresses into a list

Each label needs a name plus the address lines under it. If your list lives in a spreadsheet, you're ahead of the game. If it lives on last year's envelopes or in a battered notebook, just type each one as a little block — name on the first line, street on the next, city and state on the last.

4. Make the PDF

Three ways to turn that list into a printable page, from fastest to most manual:

Paste into a free tool. Our free label maker takes pasted addresses and gives you a print-ready PDF for one sheet — no sign-up, nothing stored.
Keep a real address book. With a free Penmark account you keep up to 50 addresses in one place, tick the people you're mailing, and download the PDF — this year and every year after. Spreadsheets import in one step.
Word mail merge. Built into Word (Mailings → Start Mail Merge → Labels), fed by your spreadsheet. It works, but expect to spend a while in merge-field settings, and keep good notes for next year.

5. Printer settings that matter

Scale = 100%. In the print dialog choose "actual size" — never "fit to page." Scaling is the number-one cause of labels that start fine and drift off by the bottom row.
Paper size = Letter. Label sheets are standard letter paper; if your dialog says A4, switch it.
Test on plain paper. Print the first page on ordinary paper and hold it over the label sheet against a light. Text inside the outlines? Load the real sheets and go.

If the labels don't line up

Everything shifted the same amount — your printer grips paper a hair off-center; nudge the layout or your printer's alignment setting once and it'll hold.
Drifts worse row by row — that's scaling; set the dialog back to 100%.
One column clipped — usually the wrong paper size (A4 vs Letter).

Keep the list — skip the setup next year

The printing is easy once your list is in one place. Penmark keeps your address book current year to year and prints it onto Avery-compatible sheets in a click. Free for your first 50 addresses.

Start free

No credit card · Prints on standard Avery sheets

Common questions

Do I need a laser printer, or does inkjet work?

Either works. Just buy the matching sheets: label packs are sold in laser and inkjet versions (for the classic 30-per-sheet size, that's Avery 5160 for laser and 8160 for inkjet). The layout is identical — the difference is the label coating.

Can I print address labels from a spreadsheet?

Yes. The traditional route is a Word mail merge fed by your spreadsheet. The simpler route is a tool that accepts your list directly — Penmark imports a spreadsheet saved as a CSV file and prints it straight onto label sheets, no merge setup.

Can I print just one label instead of a whole sheet?

Printers can't easily start partway down a label sheet, so the practical answer is to print a full sheet of that address (handy as return-address labels) or wait until you have a batch. For one-off envelopes, handwriting is honestly faster.