Paper Weights & What They Mean

Understanding Paper weights can be a confusing subject for everyone, especially those not intimately involved in the paper industry. This confusion mainly stems from the fact paper weight and thickness is almost always expressed in a Pound (lb) rating, but the lb rating can mean very different things depending upon the exact type of paper one is speaking about.

For instance, most of the pre-printed award certificates you'll find out there will carry a basis weight rating of somewhere between 24lb and 28lb. But they don't tell you is whether the pound rating is for a Bond paper, Text/Book paper, Cover stock, or any of the other possibilites. If you're really lucky these 24-28lb basis weight ratings will be for a Bond paper, which equates to roughly being a 90 gsm to 105 gsm (grams per square meter) rating. Meaning it's the same thickness as your typical printer or copier paper. If you're unlucky it'll be for a Text/Book paper. In either case these 24lb to 28lb award certificates are going to be pretty flimsy.

As you may have surmised from the above example, a much more accurate way to tell the weight or thickness of any paper is to have it's gsm or Grams per Square Meter rating. Unfortunately this simply isn't a measurement that is commonly referenced if you're not in the paper business. Grams per square meter is exactly what it sounds like: How much one square meter of the paper weighs in grams. While the gsm doesn't always automatically correlate directly to thickness (the Caliper rating does, but it is very rarely seen) it is a much more consistent measurement.

For our papers the easiest thing to remember is that it's all either Cover or Card stock, with pound ratings in the 65-70 range and around a 175 gsm weight. The exception to this rule being Vellum Bristol stock, which while 67 lb comes in at 145 gsm.

There are some very important reasons why we have made these particular choices. They include:

• These weights give a certain, highly desired sturdiness to the final award print. In layman's terms, you can hold one edge of our paper and it will not automatically fold over on itself due to simple gravity. You wouldn't want to drop this down to a flimsier paper type because people have become accustomed to good quality award certificates having a certain level of sturdiness.
  
  
• On the other side of the equation you don't want to go too thick. Going much above this level will cause issues with many modern-day desktop printers, which simply aren't constructed to handle ultra-thick paper stock. If the paper gets too thick it can cause paper jams because the rollers are not configured to handle these heavier stocks.
  
  
• The long and short of it is that the papers we offer at AAACertificates are selected so that there is enough thickness to have the desired visual effect, without getting so thick that it will cause difficulties with modern day printers.

For a more details, please refer to the chart below that shows some general information regarding paper basis weights with different paper types and their normal caliper ratings. Remembering of course to use this as a general guide because each paper manufacturer is a bit different.