Let's talk about paper weight
Are you finding paper weights (thickness) to be confusing? You are not alone!
THE BASICS
You will see the weight of paper listed in either pounds (expressed as either lb or #) if you are in North America or grams per square meter (gsm or g/m2) if you use the metric system. The metric (gsm) method is the better way to indicate the weight because you are comparing the weight of a determined size of paper (1 square meter).
Let's explore the North American system first.
Types of Paper
There are many categories of paper used in the printing industry and each has a standard sheet size known as Folio or "parent sheet". Some of the categories include:
- Bond - copy/printer paper
- Book - books, catalogs, magazines
- Text - commercial printing of brochures, letterhead, stationary
- Index - index cards, post cards, tabs and dividers
- Cover - business cards, report covers, door hangers
North America
The North American pound rating is based on the weight of a ream (500 sheets) of paper which is the Folio size for that category of paper. This is called the "basis weight". Let's use 80lb Text and 80lb Cover as an example.
The folio size for Text paper is 25"x38" and for Cover paper it is 20"x26". Even though both papers are listed as 80lb the Cover is going to be thicker than the Text. But how much thicker?
Well, since we're comparing apples to oranges it is hard to know the relative difference between the two. This is where the metric system becomes much more useful.
GSM
The metric system (gsm) is the preferred way to indicate the weight (thickness) of paper because it uses the same size of paper for the measurement of all categories of paper. This allows us to compare apples to apples. Now, back to our example from above.
Recall that we're comparing 80# Text to 80# Cover but we are not sure what the relative thickness is yet. The 80# Text actually weighs 104gsm while the 80# Cover weighs 218gsm. This shows us that the 80# Cover is over twice as thick as the 80# Text.
This was an extreme example because we know that Cover is a cardstock and by definition will be thicker than Text. But you can see that using the North American system is confusing because you need to know about the categories of paper. I'll include a link to a helpful website that has a lbs to gsm calculator on it.
What about Quilling?
Quillers tend to group quilling paper into 2 groups - paper and cardstock. Quilling paper will have a weight between 80gsm and 120gsm while cardstock will be between 160gsm and 200gsm. Cardstock over 200gsm will not coil smoothly but can be used for on-edge and outlines.
You will find that the weight of paper, even from the same brand, will vary somewhat between colors. This is because it is not possible to find all of the different colors from the same paper mill and/or in the same category. The actual dye also affects the final weight of the paper so some colors will just be heavier even if they are the same category of paper.
How does the weight of paper affect my quilling
Most of the time using different weights of paper will not be noticeable because there is such a small difference in them. The main exception to this is when creating tight coils. If you use the same length of paper that has different weights the higher gsm coil will be bigger than the lower gsm coil so you will need to play with the lengths of paper to ensure your coils are the same size.
We list the gsm for each of our papers in the Specification section of each listing. As mentioned above be sure to check the gsm even if you are buying paper of the same brand because they do vary some. We use the weights that our vendors give us.
If I want to cut my own strips what paper should I use?
For normal quilling you will want to look for a Text paper between 60 and 80 pounds. If you are doing on-edge quilling you will want Cover paper between 65 and 100 pounds.
Conversion Table
| Text 60lb | 90 gsm |
| Text 70lb | 105 gsm |
| Text 80lb | 120 gsm |
| Cover 65lb | 175 gsm |
| Cover 80lb | 215 gsm |
| Cover 100lb | 270 gsm |
We hope that this blog has helped explain paper weight.
https://soloprinting.com/resources/paper-weight-conversions/