This disclosure presents methods for controlling the temperature of a thermal ink jet and thermal printhead so that the quality of black and white printing, gray-scale printing, and color printing is improved. The methods control the average residual power of the columns of resistors so that the average residual power of an addressed column has a prescribed relationship to the average residual power of an unaddressed column. This is achieved by altering the magnitude of the drive voltages that drive the unaddressed resistors of the printhead matrix or by using nonprinting pulses. Methods for measuring the efficiency of the printhead are also presented.