Grid paper review

By the Roadmap+ Team

most obvious and apparent benefit comes from the small-spaced guide lines

Although uncommon in the English speaking world, grid (or squared or graph) paper goes well beyond high school mathematics and science. Only recently have the joys of grid paper been realized with the increasingly popular method of bullet journaling and the sharing of planner spreads on social media. So what's all the hype about?

most obvious and apparent benefit comes from the small-spaced guide lines

Benefits

The most obvious and apparent benefit of using grid paper comes from the small-spaced guide lines, in our opinion, the smaller the better, such as the 3.7mm (or 0.37cm) in the Hobonichi A6 (see below). Some other benefits include:

improved handwriting

easily organized or sectioned pages

perfect for list-making, such as to do lists

saves space as it forces you to write within the smaller lines

keeps writing consistent, for example letter heights

quick and easy graphs or charts, with or without a ruler

sketching or artwork

flippable to landscape or portrait

great for practicing calligraphy

ideal for DIY journals, such as a bullet journal

it just looks nicer

The perfect grid

Whether you're writing or sketching, or a combination of the two, light gridlines are best. If you go too dark, the page appears messy as the lines are almost as prominent as what you write over them.

Of the notebooks we reviewed (full list below), we found the Stalogy notebooks to be the best for their faint lines and almost edge-to-edge coverage. The Stalogy A5 has slightly smaller lines than the A6 (0.4 versus 0.5), which makes it ideal for writing and sketching. It's so good we reordered a few for each of us here at Roadmap+.

The darkest - and largest - lines were in the Rhodia and Moleskine. Unlike the faint dots in their dot grid notebooks, the "squared" Moleskines were too dark for sketching or a few words per line, and in a Large (around A5, but narrower) size or less, there's simply too much going on for the width of the paper.

Everyone has different needs, so it's best to try them for yourself. Some stationers and shops offer single sheet samples, but sometimes some voyeuristic Instagram activity is enough. For example, check out #bulletjournal, #hobonichi, #stalogy or #planneraddict.