Text Weight vs. Cover Weight

Paper choice makes a huge difference in the size and feel of your final printed piece. It is important to understand the difference between text weight paper and cover weight paper, so you know which to pick!

What is Text Weight Paper?

Text weight paper is thin, flexible, and lightweight. This type of paper is easy to roll and fold. It is perfect for multipage documents and documents that need to be folded, like interior book pages, flyers, brochures, magazines, and notepads.

What is Cover Weight Paper?

Cover weight paper is thick, rigid, and durable. This type of paper needs to be scored before folding. It is perfect for paper products that need to hold their shape and stand up to rougher conditions, like book covers, hang tags, packaging, belly bands, and direct mail.

How is Paper Weight Measured?

Paper is often labeled in points or pounds, but what do those measurements actually mean?

Pounds are one way that paper weight is measured. It refers to how much a ream of paper (500 sheets) weighs. This measurement is done by paper mills in the paper’s original, uncut size. This number can give you a good idea about how thick and dense a paper is. The higher the number, the heavier (and probably thicker) the paper will be. For example, 500 uncut sheets of 100lb text stock would weigh 100 pounds. 100lb text stock is a sturdy but still flexible text weight paper. 100lb text stock is slightly thicker and heavier than 80lb text stock.

Paper can also be measured in points. Points refer to the thickness of paper. The larger the point weight, the thicker and heavier the paper will be. For example, 10pt paper will be strong and thick, but 16pt paper will be noticeably more rigid and thick. Point weights higher than 14 are very thick and durable. These papers are perfect for packaging and other products that require something sturdy. Points are typically used to measure our thickest papers.

How can Cover Weight Paper Weigh the Same as Text Weight Paper?

Text weight paper and cover weight paper often have the same weight label but have very different thicknesses and rigidity. For example, 100lb cover paper is much sturdier and thicker than 100lb text paper. This is because cover weight paper and text weight paper are measured by the paper mill at different sizes. Uncut sheets of text weight paper are often double the size of uncut sheets of cover weight paper. This means that even though they weigh the same amount, text weight paper includes almost double the amount of material. This is how cover weight can feel so different from text weight, despite both papers having the same weight measurement.