An ink jet recording apparatus includes: a black print head that discharges black ink; a color print head that discharges color ink having a higher permeability with a recording paper sheet than the black ink; and a determining unit that detects, based on input data, a black image region in which recording is performed with the black ink and a color image region in which recording is performed with the color ink, and, based on the detection result, determines whether the black ink or the color ink is first applied onto the recording paper sheet. In this ink jet recording apparatus, each of the black print head and the color print head has nozzles divided into several sets, and a multi-path recording operation is performed by scanning each recording region several times with the sets of nozzles.