If almost all printing companies put ink on paper, knowing how to determine and articulate your paper needs will help you get the results you expect from your printing services. This is true whether you’re working with brochure printers, book printers, sticker printers, or postcard printers. Understanding paper qualities will help you in all these cases.
How Do You Choose a Paper Stock for Your Print Job?
It’s all so confusing: #1 sheets, #4 sheets. Whiteness, brightness. What do paper grades mean?
First of all, “paper grade” refers primarily to a paper’s brightness. Brightness is not the same as whiteness. Brightness measures the amount of light a particular paper reflects, whereas whiteness refers to the color of the light it reflects. That is, a particularly bright sheet, known as a #1 sheet, reflects more light than a #2, or #3 sheet.
Currently, paper companies also include high opacity, good formation, and runnability on press as criteria for determining a paper grade. In addition, the newer #2 sheets are often as bright as some #1 sheets. For exceptionally bright paper, you should worry less about the grade (#1 or #2) and more about the paper brightness measurement. Look for a paper stock with a brightness between 94 and 98. The highest level on this scale is 100.
Slightly different from “brightness” is “whiteness.” A paper stock may be “yellow-white” or “blue-white.” That is, a particular printing stock may have either a yellowish (or warm) cast, or it may have a bluish (or cool) cast. The purest white sheet reflects all colors equally. A blue-white sheet looks brighter than a yellow-white sheet and provides more contrast to the text and images printed on it.
In contrast, a warmer, yellow-white sheet might be a better choice for flesh tones. It would also be easier on the eyes than a blue-white sheet, so you might choose a yellow-white sheet for a job with a lot of text and relatively few images.
As you choose paper for your custom printing job, also remember that most offset inks are somewhat (or totally) transparent, depending on the ink. The paper substrate therefore alters the perceived colors of the inks (like a filter placed over a theater spotlight). This is why flesh tones might look more natural on a warm, yellow-white sheet than on a blue-white paper.
How Would You Choose One Sheet Over Another?
The short answer is to get a printed sample, or ideally a number of printed samples on various grades of paper and in various shades of whiteness. Nothing will show paper differences more dramatically than the same image printed on a blue-white and a yellow-white sheet, or a #1, #2, or #3 grade paper stock.
If you’re looking for some guidelines as a starting point, consider an annual report. The paper may need to be crisp and bright to reflect financial success. Therefore, you might choose a blue-white sheet (for perceived brightness), a #1 sheet (for actual light reflecting power or true brightness), and a coated sheet to make the photography “pop” (by increasing contrast).
To project a more environmentally conscious image, a wildlife foundation might choose an uncoated #2 or #3 sheet with a more subdued yellow-white cast. This would tone down the image of the annual report and make it seem less aggressive.
Catalogs and directories are often printed on #3, #4, or #5 sheets. In this case, particularly given the huge amount of paper involved (and the fact that higher grade sheets cost more than lower grade sheets), you could save a large amount of money by choosing a lower grade (less bright) paper stock.
As you get further down the list of paper grade measurements (#3, #4, and #5 sheets), paper stocks also start to include impurities, such as “lignin.” In contrast to “freesheets” (or lignin-free sheets), lower-grade paper stocks do not last as long (their often acidic nature allows the paper to yellow and become brittle).
Lower-grade papers include “commodity” and “groundwood” stocks (made by physically grinding up wood rather than chemically decomposing it to create the wet mixture from which paper is made). These paper stocks, ideal for magazines and catalogs, are often very thin. Some are “supercalendared” (passed through a series of metal rollers during the paper-making process) to give them a flat, hard surface.
Learning to identify and specify the best paper for your particular business printing job will help ensure that you receive the results you expect from your printing services. Take the time to understand the various qualities of paper and how the paper stocks differ. Learn to distinguish the papers best suited to business printing jobs with brochure printers, book printers, sticker printers, or postcard printers. Understanding paper qualities will help you in all these cases.
