Paper, explained.
Paper is half of what you feel when you pick up a printed piece. Here is what the numbers mean, what the words mean, and how we choose.
Three ways to say how heavy a paper is.
Pounds, grams per square meter and points all describe the same sheet. Only one of them is unambiguous.
100 lb
Pounds (basis weight)
The American way. What 500 sheets weigh at the paper's basis size, and the basis size is different for each kind of paper: 25 x 38 in for text, 20 x 26 in for cover, 17 x 22 in for bond. So 100 lb text and 100 lb cover are very different sheets, and the number only makes sense with its category.
270 gsm
Grams per square meter
What one square meter of the paper weighs. The same scale for every kind of paper, so a 270 gsm sheet is a 270 gsm sheet whether a mill calls it cover, bristol or index. When two papers have to be compared, compare their gsm.
16 pt
Points (caliper)
Thickness, in thousandths of an inch: 16 pt is 0.016 in. It is what you feel between finger and thumb. Weight and thickness do not move together: a bulky uncoated sheet can be thicker than a dense coated one that weighs more. Business cards are usually quoted in points.
| Kind | Pounds | gsm | Caliper | Typically used for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bond | 20 lb | 75 | n/a | Forms, long documents |
| Bond | 24 lb | 90 | n/a | Letterhead, notepads |
| Bond | 28 lb | 104 | n/a | Handouts, manuals, pages printed both sides (the same sheet as 70 lb text) |
| Text | 80 lb | 118 | n/a | Flyers, brochures, booklet pages |
| Text | 100 lb | 148 | n/a | Heavier flyers, posters, pages that should feel like paper |
| Cover | 80 lb | 217 | 8 to 9 pt | Booklet covers, folded cards |
| Cover | 100 lb | 271 | 10 to 11 pt | Postcards, brochures, folded cards |
| Board | 12 pt | 325 | 12 pt | Tags, table tents, packaging (coated one side, sold by thickness) |
| Cover | 130 lb | 350 | 13 to 17 pt | Business cards, invitations, heavy covers; the uncoated sheet is the thickest |
To convert: text pounds x 1.48 = gsm, cover pounds x 2.70 = gsm, bond pounds x 3.76 = gsm.
Text or cover.
The first fork in the road. Everything else is a variation on one of these two.
Text weight
Thin enough to fold without scoring, run through a printer, or bind into a book. Flyers, brochures, booklet pages, letterhead, posters. Roughly 60 lb to 100 lb text, 90 to 150 gsm. A magazine page is text weight.
Cover weight
Card stock. It stands up on its own, takes a beating in a wallet and has to be scored before it folds. Business cards, postcards, invitations, booklet covers, greeting cards. Roughly 65 lb to 130 lb cover, 175 to 350 gsm, 8 to 17 pt.
You will also see bond (office and letterhead paper, 20 lb to 32 lb), index and bristol (stiff, uncoated card for tabs and tags). They are all still just text or cover in spirit.
Coated or uncoated.
The surface decides how ink sits, how color looks and how the piece feels in the hand.
Uncoated
Bare paper. Ink soaks in slightly, so colors are a touch softer and fine detail a touch gentler. Warm, natural, writable with any pen, no glare. The choice for stationery, anything with a lot of type, and anything that should feel like paper.
Coated: gloss
A clay coating sealed and polished. Ink stays on top, so photographs are sharp and colors saturated. Reflects light, shows fingerprints, hard to write on. The choice for photo-led pieces and anything that gets handled a lot.
Coated: silk and velvet
Coated, but with the shine knocked back. Silk (also called satin) keeps most of the color punch with very little glare; velvet (a matte coating) goes further and feels almost uncoated. The all-rounder: brochures, folded cards, booklet covers, business cards that should look photographic and feel quiet.
UV coating and laminates go on after printing, on top of any of these. They are finishes, not papers; finishes are further down.
Grain direction.
The thing nobody tells you, and the reason a fold cracks or a book will not lie flat.
With the grain
Paper is made of fibers, and on the paper machine they line up in the direction the sheet travels. Fold parallel to them and the fibers bend: the crease is clean and sharp, the piece closes flat, and the pages of a book turn easily.
Against the grain
Fold across the fibers and they snap instead of bending. On cover stock, and especially on anything coated or with solid ink over the fold, the crease cracks and shows white. It can be tamed by scoring first, but it never folds as cleanly.
Grain long, grain short
A sheet is grain long when the fibers run parallel to its long side and grain short when they run parallel to the short side. On a spec, the dimension listed last (or underlined) is the grain direction: 12 x 18 is grain long along the 18 in side. Our parent sheets are 12 x 18 and 13 x 19.
Why it matters for books
In a booklet the grain must run parallel to the spine. Then the pages turn softly and the book lies flat. Cross-grain pages fight the spine, cockle in humid weather and stay sprung open. We lay every booklet out grain-along-spine, even when it takes more paper.
Why it matters for cards
A folded card wants its fold along the grain, so it closes clean. Flat cards are stiffer across the grain than along it, and grain also decides curl: cross-grain sheets are the ones that will not sit flat out of the box. We choose the direction for every job.
Brightness, shade and opacity.
Three smaller numbers that change how white a white is and how much shows through.
92 to 98
Brightness
How much blue light the sheet reflects, on a scale to 100. Most printing papers sit between 92 and 98; higher makes colors look crisper and contrast harder. (The European ISO scale reads a few points higher for the same paper.)
Blue or warm
Shade
Two papers with the same brightness can look different: a blue-white reads clean and modern, a natural or cream white reads warm and classic. Put them side by side before you decide; a warm white on its own looks white.
90%+
Opacity
How much the other side shows through. Heavier and thicker means more opaque. It matters for anything printed on both sides, and most for text-weight pages with solid ink on the back; when a design has big dark areas we step the paper up a weight.
The papers we stock.
Six sheets on the shelf cover most of what people ask for. Each one is profiled on the press, so what we proof is what you get. Anything else is ordered in for the job.
Smooth uncoated
100 lb text, 130 lb cover 148 and 352 gsm 17 pt cover
Cougar, a bright white uncoated sheet with a super smooth surface: no shine, no texture to speak of. Ink sits a touch soft and warm, and you can write on it with any pen.
Good for Business cards, postcards, invitations, letterhead, anything meant to be held and written on.
Our everyday card in 130 lb cover, and the text weight for flyers and pages that should feel like paper. Usually run bare; UV coating or a laminate when the job wants it.
Gloss coated
80 lb text to 130 lb cover 118 to 350 gsm
Polar Bear gloss, a bright coated sheet with a polished surface. Ink stays on top, so photographs are sharp and color is at its fullest.
Good for Flyers, brochures, postcards, booklets with photographs, menus, anything led by pictures.
Five weights on the shelf: 80 and 100 lb text for pages and flyers, 80, 100 and 130 lb cover for cards and covers. UV coating over it adds protection without changing the look.
Velvet coated
130 lb cover 350 gsm 14 pt
Polar Bear velvet, the matte side of the same coated family. Color stays rich, but the surface is soft and free of glare, close to uncoated in the hand.
Good for Business cards, postcards, invitations, covers that want full color without shine.
Our pick when a card should look photographic and feel quiet. A soft touch laminate on top of it is as soft as a card gets.
Silk coated
100 lb cover 271 gsm 11 pt
MacGregor silk, a coated sheet with a low sheen between gloss and matte. Most of the color of gloss with very little glare.
Good for Brochures, folded cards, booklet covers, postcards, the all-rounder for pieces with both type and pictures.
Where we start for a folded piece: it creases and folds cleanly and reads well under any light.
Coated one side
12 pt cover 325 gsm
Tango, a stiff white card coated on one side and bare on the other. The coated face prints bright and crisp; the back is uncoated, so it takes a pen.
Good for Hang tags, tickets, table tents, packaging and boxes, cards with a writable back.
Sold by thickness rather than weight, like most packaging board. Creases cleanly for folded packaging.
Text and bond
20 lb to 28 lb bond 75 to 104 gsm
Smooth, bright white uncoated sheets that go through an office printer and take a pen: Mohawk 24 lb bond, Hammermill 28 lb and 20 lb.
Good for Letterhead, forms, notepads, manuals, handouts, booklet pages that are mostly type.
24 lb is the letterhead weight. 28 lb (the same sheet as 70 lb text) for handouts and pages with color on both sides; 20 lb for forms and long documents.
Ordered in for a job
Cotton, made from cotton rather than wood pulp: soft, thick and toothy, for wedding suites and stationery for people who care about paper. Kraft, unbleached brown with visible fiber, where ink prints darker and colors go earthy: tags, packaging inserts, invitations that should feel handmade. Black, deep black all the way through, so the cut edges are black too: nothing prints in color on it, so it is a sheet for foil. Textured, colored and other specialty stocks by request.
We order these for the job, so allow a little lead time, and we will tell you what the sheet does to the color before you commit.
Finishes.
What happens to the sheet after the ink is on it. UV coating is our usual answer; the rest are there when the piece calls for them.
UV coating
Gloss coating
A liquid coating rolled over the printed sheet and cured hard under ultraviolet light. High gloss, wipes clean, cured in seconds, and no film to peel.
Good for Business cards, postcards, menus, covers, anything that gets handled a lot.
Our usual protective finish. It deepens color a little and cannot be written on, so we leave it off anything that needs a pen.
Soft touch
Laminate +1 pt
A thin velvet-feel film over the printed sheet. Matte, warm to the touch, and people cannot stop touching it.
Good for Business cards, covers, anything meant to be held for a moment.
Deepens blacks and softens colors slightly. Not writable. We use it less than UV coating, but nothing else feels like it.
Gloss laminate
Laminate +1 pt
A high-shine film bonded over the sheet. Colors look saturated, the surface wipes clean, and it adds stiffness and real resistance to water.
Good for Menus and cards that get wet or handled hard, covers that need to last.
Heavier duty than UV coating, and it shows fingerprints. Matte laminate is the quiet version.
Foil
Gold, silver, copper
Metallic foil pressed onto the sheet where you want it: a name, a logo, an edge. Catches light the way ink never will.
Good for Invitations, business cards, certificates, covers.
Set up for each job rather than kept on the shelf, so plan it early. Fine lines and small type foil best above about 6 pt. Works on black and kraft, where ink cannot.
And the rest
Matte laminate, the quiet version of gloss. Creasing, so cover stock folds clean, and perforation for tear-off stubs. Rounded corners. Shapes cut with a laser rather than a die: any outline, fine detail, nothing to make first, and a faintly darkened edge on paper. Contour-cut stickers and labels on the cutting plotter. Most of it is a line on the quote.
Which paper for what.
Where we start when someone asks.
| Piece | Weight | What we reach for |
|---|---|---|
| Business cards | 130 lb cover, 13 to 17 pt | Smooth uncoated for a classic card that takes a pen; velvet with soft touch for the softest; gloss with UV coating for full color that wipes clean. |
| Postcards and invitations | 100 lb to 130 lb cover | Smooth uncoated for invitations and anything hand-addressed; gloss or velvet for a photo postcard. Heavy enough to mail without bending. |
| Flyers and one-sheets | 80 lb to 100 lb text | Gloss for pictures, smooth uncoated for type. 100 lb text if it will be handed out; 80 lb if it goes in an envelope. |
| Booklets and programs | 80 lb text inside, 80 lb to 100 lb cover outside | Gloss text for the pages with a gloss or silk cover; 28 lb bond inside when it is mostly type. Grain along the spine so it lies flat. |
| Letterhead and notepads | 24 lb bond | Smooth uncoated, so it goes through a printer and takes a pen. |
| Menus | 100 lb cover, UV coated | Gloss cover with UV coating so it wipes clean and survives the table; a gloss laminate when it will get properly wet. |
| Greeting and folded cards | 100 lb to 130 lb cover, creased | Silk or smooth uncoated, always creased before folding, with the grain along the fold. |
| Tags, tents and packaging | 12 pt coated one side | Stiff, bright on the coated face, writable on the back, creased for the folds. |
| Posters | 100 lb text, or wide format | Gloss or smooth uncoated text on the press up to 13 x 19 in; poster and photo papers on the wide-format printer for anything bigger. |
Still not sure? Choose it with us.
Tell us what you are making and we will put the right sheet on the quote, with the reasons. Paper is the one thing a screen cannot show you, so when we talk we will show you the difference.