Tuesday Tip | Which Paper is Best For Printing? + A Giveaway

Over my years of printing various printables it became clear that the paper used made a definite difference in the look and feel of the finished cards.  So I decided to take a closer look and compare the print quality of three different kinds of paper. I think what paper you decide to use really depends on personal preference, but here’s how my experiment stacked up.

The Contenders

Smooth white Bristol paper by Claire Fontaine (similar in the US)

Textured Scrapbooking Cardstock by Bazzill

Epson Archival Matte

The Results

Spring 4×6 journal cards

The results are really subtle! The smooth cardstock is the whitest of the three, which I prefer, but the actual print looks best to me on the textured card stock. it really seems to depend on the card design because take a look at the Spring 3×4 Cards now

My favourite is the smooth white cardstock. The colours are brighter and more true to life, closer to how they appear on my computer screen. I confess to being disappointed by the prints on the Epson Matte, especially as it was twice the price of the smooth white cardstock! I’ll have to see how it works for printing photos instead.

So which one is your favourite?

I also did a quick comparison of the printer papers I use for my planner inserts. I started out using regular 80g paper, but later switched to 100g, bright white by Xerox. Here’s why:

The colours just look better on the bright white 100g paper! Also when I use markers to write, there’s no bleeding!

A final benefit is that the 100g paper holds up much better to punching and folding.

Have you ever compared the papers you use for printing? Which do you prefer? I’ll choose one person from the comments to get all the cards I printed for this little test! I’ll draw a winner next Monday April 12th.