How to Buy the Best Stationery

It’s not often that you sit down to write using a pen and paper — so when you do, you probably want to make it count. It doesn’t matter whether you are writing a to-do list or a love letter; your stationery should be both durable and beautiful, motivating you to spend more time writing at a desk and less time typing on a screen. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to buy low-quality stationery that rips, wrinkles or otherwise doesn’t feel satisfying to use. If you want to invest in stationery that motivates and inspires you, read on.

Understand Paper Type and Weight

First, it is important to realize that there are different kinds of paper for different purposes. For example, cardstock is thicker and more durable than the type of paper you might use in your printer, and that is because cardstock is most often used for paper goods meant to last through tough treatment — like business cards or postcards. Only lighter-weight cardstock is capable of folding, so typically cardstock isn’t ideal for stationery; it is simply too bulky, and it tends to be too expensive for the average letter.

Then again, you don’t want to use flimsy printer paper, either. The paper you are most likely to have in abundance at home is 20-pound copier paper, which is often composed of short-fiber cellulose — in other words, trees. The weight, 20-pounds, is determined by how much 500 sheets of that kind of paper will weigh. You want to avoid acquiring a paper with a weight higher than about 32 pounds; not only are papers that heavy difficult to find and quite costly, but they also tend to be difficult to use, and a bit too thick to fold and send through the mail.

While a higher-weight copier paper might suit your needs, you might find greater satisfaction in a higher-quality paper type, like bond paper, which is a mixture of cellulose and “rag,” or cotton. Bond is a bit more durable and offers a more pleasant texture than copier paper, making it a fine material for fancy stationery.

Consider Stationery Design

Next, you need to consider what your stationery will look like. This will largely be determined by your tastes, but you might also consider what you will be doing with your stationery. Stationery tends to describe paper for writing on, especially for keeping up correspondence, but in truth stationery means any kind of writing material, such as pads of paper for notetaking, books of paper for journaling, index cards for studying and even sketch paper for doing various types of art.

If you are only using your stationary for the occasional personal to-do list, you might not mind a wild design; on the other hand, if you are going to use your stationery to send letters or write diary entries, you probably want the pages to be a bit less crowded with color and decorations, so your writing is easily legible. Then again, if you are using your stationery in your career, you might want it to be a bit more subdued, whereas personal stationery should reflect your personality and interests.

If you want to wow with your custom stationery, you might consider following these current trends:

* Consistency. Every element of your stationery should have consistent design, especially in color scheme and decorative elements.
* Color. Bold color use is very much in, so you should feel free to take advantage of bright hues like neon pink, electric blue and banana yellow.
* Maximalism. After more than a decade of minimalist design, you should feel free to go as wild and busy with your stationery as your heart desires.
* Unconventional symmetry. Traditionally, stationery is left-right symmetrical, meaning if you fold the page hot-dog style — down its longest axis — it will mirror itself. However, you might consider tilting the symmetry on the diagonal for extra flair.

In truth, there is no such thing as stationery that is objectively “the best” — but there is the best stationery for you. You should work with a quality stationery provider to ensure that your needs are met, and that you find great joy in the stationery elements you have on your desk.