Coated & Uncoated Card Stock for Your Invitations and Stationery

Cardstock for printing greeting cards, business cards and craftwork

Cardstock refers to thick paper, having certain ‘paper weight’ that makes it fit for many specific applications. The paper is commonly used for making business cards, flat card invitations and greeting cards, different papercraft work, scrapbooking, as a mounting surface for printouts and various other applications. Cardstock come in a variety of colors and surfaces and are great material for adding dimensions to different design concepts. Possessed with superior dimensional stability, good folding ability, scoring, embossing and die-cutting qualities, it offers an excellent uniform printing surface. The characteristic features for distinguishing a sheet of cardstock would be the finish, fiber, color, surface texture, size and weight. Among these, the predominant feature to actually categorize different grade of cardstock would be the weight.

Cardstock weight and thickness

The quality of paper is characterized by weight and thickness. Cardstock falls in the heavier grade of paper category. Cardstock lies in the grade between 60 lbs and 140 lbs. The label is assigned on the basis of the weight of 500 sheets of 20 inches x 26 inches of cardstock, of a particular thickness. If the weight is found to be 80 lbs., also known as the ‘basis’ weight, it is referred to as ‘80lbs cardstock’. Even when called by weight, the term is also a reference to the thickness of the cardstock.

Thickness of paper is expressed in ‘mil’, which denotes thousandths of an inch or .001 inch and is known as the ‘point size’. To avoid any inconsistency due to the different description of standard paper, the International Organization for Standardization measures ‘paper weight’ in grams per square meter, expressing it as ‘gsm’. This system of measurement makes it much easier to understand what exactly the ‘grade of cardstock’ means. For example, 120 – 150 gsm is the regular cardstock, 150 – 200 gsm is the heavy cardstock and above 200 gsm is referred to as super heavy cardstock.

Coated vs. Uncoated cardstock

Cardstock that has a coating applied to one or both sides is known as coated cardstock. The coating is generally of an inorganic compound and is meant to impart qualities of better weight, surface gloss and ink absorbency to the cardstock. Many different finishes such as dull, gloss and matt are given to the paper through various coatings, to enhance its appeal. Glossy paper can be semi glossy, soft glossy or satin glossy too. The most commonly used compound for coating paper used in commercial printing is Kaolinite. Many times, an ultra violet plastic coating is applied to the cardstock after printing. Coated paper has much better reflectivity than uncoated paper and generally produces sharper and brighter images. The downside is that all types of coated paper may not be suitable for use in all types of printers. You would have to check with the printer’s specifications to determine if the paper you intend to use would give the desired results.

Good Cardstock Qualities

Good quality card stock should be lignin and chlorine and acid free and must possess good gluing adhesion and stamp reception qualities. The colors must be true and fade resistant. Other things to look for would be good folding characteristics and good die and punch properties. With hallmarks as these, the cardstock can be placed in the high quality category.

Where to place an order

When you require ordering good card stock, you can safely rely on us as the single source to supply everything to cater to your needs. You get the widest selection of paper products, including card stock, to fit all requirements. Most of the stock available is uncoated, making it compatible to both inkjet and laser printing.