TYPES OF
PAPER
For Printing
by Sarah Cantavalle
Choosing from the various types of
paper available on the market is a key
factor in achieving top quality digital
printing.You need to choose the paper type
that is best suited to bringing out the visual
and textual contents of your publishing or graphic
design project, a choice that should be made carefully
and that will vary depending on the type of product
you wish to print.
Choosing from the range of paper types on offer is not always easy
when you’re faced with a huge array of sheets, all with completely
different properties. Each type of paper has a weight, a processing
type and a finish, which determine its transparency, appearance,
weight, thickness, level of opaqueness, feel and durability.
In this guide, we help you choose the paper type that best suits your
digital printing needs by looking at some of the different weights
available on the market, the recommended applications for each
and the most common paper types.
What is paperweight?
The difference between
weight and thickness
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Lucid Motif Graphic Industry
Additives: some papermakers, to reduce the use of
cellulose and to achieve a special visual and tactile
effect, add certain substances to the pulp. This
The technical definition of weight, or grammage, is
“the weight of a sheet of paper with a surface area of It’s important to distinguish between the weight of applies, for example, to our environmentally friendly
one square metre”; in other words, it represents the the paper and the thickness, or calliper, of the sheet. Laguna paper, made with seaweed from the Venice
ratio between the weight of the paper and its area. While a higher weight often corresponds to thicker Lagoon, and to other types of eco-friendly paper
made with organic residue from oranges, coffee,
It is measured in grams per square metre (gsm) or
paper, other factors can affect this too:
maize and olives.
simply in grams (g) and is a way of distinguishing
Type of processing: the processing techniques
between the various types of paper on the market,
So it’s clear that two sheets with the same weight
chosen by the papermaker can give paper with
along with some other characteristics, which we
can have different thicknesses, depending on the
the same grammage a higher density, meaning
will look at shortly.
type of processing and the paper’s composition.
it isthinner, or a lower density, which produces a
For example, photocopy paper (also known as
thicker sheet of paper.
‘uncoated paper’) has a weight of between 60 gsm
and 90 gsm, while paperboard has a weight ranging Wood fibre content: paper is made by compacting
fibres from trees, obtained both through chemical
from 150 gsm up to 350 gsm. The grammage
affects the paper’s texture to the touch and its level processes (cellulose) and mechanical processes
oftransparency, which will be lower if you choose a (wood pulp). High wood fibre content can increase
the thickness of the paper.
paper with a higher weight