How to make a printable calendar

Any month, any year, printed the way you want it — no subscription and no account.

Sometimes paper is simply better: a wall planner the whole household can see, a term calendar for a classroom, a month with room to write on.

Step-by-step

1. Choose the month or the whole year.
2. Choose the week start — Monday or Sunday.
3. Choose the layout, one month per page or a year on one sheet.
4. Print.

Week start matters more than you expect

Most of Europe starts the week on Monday; the United States and Canada usually on Sunday. Get it wrong and every date sits under the wrong day heading — a mistake that is surprisingly easy to miss until somebody turns up on the wrong day.

Layout

• One month per page — large squares to write in. For a family planner or a desk.
• A year on a page — an overview for planning holidays and terms. Too small to write in.
• A quarter per page — a compromise that suits project planning.

Printing

Print landscape for a wall calendar; the squares end up considerably larger. Check that your printer is not scaling to fit, which shrinks everything and adds margins you did not ask for — "actual size" or 100% is what you want.

Week numbers are not universal

If a calendar shows week numbers and they disagree with a colleague's, neither is wrong — there is more than one system. Under ISO 8601, used across most of Europe and by most business software, week 1 is the week containing the first Thursday of January, equivalently the week containing 4 January. Weeks start on Monday, and every week belongs entirely to one year.

The common North American convention instead makes week 1 the week containing 1 January and starts weeks on Sunday. The two systems disagree about the number of the first week in most years, and the offset persists for the rest of it. So "week 32" is only unambiguous between people using the same convention, and a printed calendar should say which one it is using if the numbers are going to be quoted at anyone.

The first column decides how the month looks

Starting the week on Monday or on Sunday changes which dates fall in which row, and therefore how many rows the month needs. A 31-day month beginning on the wrong side of the boundary spills into a sixth row, and a grid designed for five rows either squashes or runs onto a second page.

This is worth checking on the specific months you are printing rather than in general, because it depends entirely on which weekday the first falls on. It is also the reason a Monday-start layout suits a working calendar: it keeps Saturday and Sunday together at the end of the row, so a weekend reads as one block rather than being split across the two edges of the page.

Frequently asked questions

Can I choose which day the week starts on?

Yes, Monday or Sunday. It is worth setting deliberately, since the convention differs by country and the calendar is wrong throughout if it does not match expectations.

Can I print a whole year on one page?

Yes. It is useful for an overview, though the squares are too small to write in — use one month per page if you need writing room.

Are public holidays marked?

No. Holidays vary by country and region, so the calendar is left plain for you to mark your own.