Now that you’ve seen the six different types of printer paper, let’s go over one more thing you need to know about printer paper—its features.
Printer paper has three primary features: Coating, brightness and weight. What do these three features mean as it relates to printer paper? Let’s go over them:
1. Coating
Coating is a type of polymer, or synthetic substance, that is layered onto paper to make it shiny and bright.
If you’ve ever seen a piece of paper that appears to have a sheen to it, that’s because of the paper’s coating.
2. Brightness
Brightness is exactly what it sounds like: it is the method used to determine how white and bright a page is.
The brightness scale is typically 0-100, with 80-100 being the sweet spot for high-quality prints. The general rule of thumb is that the brighter the paper, the better the overall quality and appearance of the print job.
3. Weight
The weight of the paper is usually measured in grammes and refers to its thickness and weight.
While paperweight can vary greatly, the most common paperweights are 75 grammes or 20 pounds of regular paper (like the copy paper mentioned in the first section.) Cardstock is the most commonly used “thick” paper and weighs approximately 176 grammes or 65 pounds.
Understanding why grammes and pounds are used to measure paper can be perplexing, especially when other weight definitions such as cover paper, bond, or GSM enter the picture.
