Resource
Choosing paper and board
The substrate decides more about a finished job than the artwork does — how it prints, how it folds, how it survives handling and what it costs. This is how to pick one.
The weights below are ordinary industry ranges rather than a house list. What we can run on a given job depends on the construction and the finishing, and we confirm it with your quote.
Start here
Choose by what you are making
Find the row that matches the job. If two rows fit, the tighter constraint usually wins — a pack that ships on its own is a corrugated question before it is a print question.
| What you are making | Usual board | Typical weight | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Retail folding carton, outside printed only | Duplex (coated white, grey back) | 250–400 gsm | The economical default. Nobody sees the inside, so the grey back is free money. |
| Carton where the inside is visible | SBS / art card | 250–400 gsm | White throughout, so the interior prints as cleanly as the exterior. |
| Pharmaceutical carton | SBS / art card | 250–350 gsm | Virgin fibre, a clean white base for small type, and a good surface for 2D codes. |
| Cosmetics outer, premium | SBS, or greyboard with a printed wrap | Board 300+ gsm | Finish carries the price point; rigid construction where the box is part of the product. |
| Rigid gift or presentation box | Greyboard core + printed wrap | Core 1–3 mm | Wrapped and hand-assembled, not folded. Longer lead time, premium feel. |
| E-commerce mailer | E flute corrugated | E flute | Thin enough to print well, strong enough for a courier network. |
| Heavier or fragile shipped product | B flute corrugated | B flute | More cushioning and stacking strength; coarser print surface. |
| Small premium box that still ships | F flute corrugated | F flute | Finest corrugated print surface, least protection of the three. |
| Natural / unbleached look | Kraft board | 250–400 gsm | Strong and characterful, but CMYK prints muted — design for one or two spot colours. |
| Takeaway food, hot or oily | Barrier-coated or grease-resistant board | Per application | The coating does the work, not the print. Specify contact type first. |
| Shopping bag | Laminated art paper, or kraft | 170–250 gsm | The turnover and handle fixing matter more than the weight alone. |
| Brochure or catalogue text pages | Coated art paper (gloss, silk or matte) | 100–170 gsm | Silk is the usual compromise: photographs hold, text stays readable. |
| Cover, company profile or report | Coated or uncoated cover stock | 250–350 gsm | Score it at the hinge or it will crack on first opening. |
| Letterhead and stationery | Uncoated wove or laid | 100–120 gsm | Has to take a pen and go through an office printer. |
| Business card | Coated or uncoated board | 300–450 gsm | Weight is most of the perceived quality. Finish does the rest. |
| Pharmaceutical leaflet or insert | Lightweight uncoated | Low gsm | Very light stock, very small type, high fold count — the hardest thing to print well. |
The materials
Five families, and what each costs you
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Duplex board
Coated white one side, grey recycled reverse. The retail workhorse.
Economical, prints well on the white side, takes every finish.
The grey shows if the inside is visible, and mutes any interior print.
Read more -
SBS / art card
Bleached virgin fibre, white throughout.
Prints cleanly inside and out; the best base for precise or very light colours.
Meaningfully dearer than duplex — wasted where nobody sees the interior.
Read more -
Kraft board
Uncoated, usually brown, unusually strong for its weight.
Distinctive natural look; excellent with one or two spot colours and with foil.
Full-colour CMYK prints muted and shifted. White needs a separate opaque ink.
Read more -
Corrugated
Fluted core between liners. E, B and F flutes for retail work.
Strength and cushioning at low weight; the only sensible choice for shipping.
Print surface is coarser than flat board, and taller flutes show ridging.
Read more -
Greyboard
Thick dense recycled board. The core of a rigid box.
Holds its shape under pressure; gives a rigid box its weight in the hand.
Never printed or folded — it is wrapped, by hand, which is why it takes longer.
Read more
The measurement trap
GSM is weight; caliper is thickness
They are not the same thing and they are not interchangeable. Two boards at the same GSM can differ noticeably in thickness, because one is denser than the other. GSM tells you what a sheet weighs per square metre; caliper tells you how thick it actually is.
On packaging, caliper is the figure that matters, because thickness is what the machinery interacts with. Crease width is set from it. The internal dimensions of the finished box are derived from it. And a dieline drawn for one caliper and used at another produces a box whose creases are too narrow and whose corners bind — the drawing looks correct, the box is not.
Which is why heavier is not automatically better. Going up a grade "to be safe" can produce a carton that cracks on the fold, costs more per unit and costs more to post.
Food contact and pharmaceutical work
Both raise substrate questions that go beyond appearance and cost, and both are the brand owner's responsibility to specify rather than ours to assume.
For food, the first question is the contact type — direct, indirect through a liner, or non-contact. It decides the board, the coating and the ink system, and it is recorded on the job sheet rather than left to memory.
For pharmaceutical packaging, the substrate also has to hold small type cleanly and give a surface a 2D code will grade on — which makes it a compliance-adjacent decision rather than only an aesthetic one.
Settle it on a sample
Rigidity is easy to feel and very hard to specify. Where the board choice is genuinely open, ask for mock-ups in two weights and decide with them in your hand — it takes ten seconds and settles an argument that can otherwise run for a week.