Journal 4 MIN READ
Two papers, and why both are matte
Two uncoated matte stocks, 250 gsm and 170 gsm, loose or framed. What the weight actually changes, and why gloss was never an option.
Two decisions hide in this: weight and surface. They do different jobs. The weight is left on the page as a choice — 250 gsm or 170 gsm. The surface was decided once, for everyone: matte.
Weight is about handling
Paper weight is grams per square metre. A magazine page is around 100. A decent poster is 200. Heavy art stock is 300 and up.
What weight changes:
- Curl. Light paper remembers the tube. Heavy paper lets go of it sooner. - Feel. Weight is the first thing anyone notices when handed a print. It is most of what "quality" means before anything is on the wall. - Handling. Light paper creases at the corner while you get it into a frame.
What it does not change much: how it looks once it is behind glass. Framed, a 200 and a 300 are hard to tell apart at two metres.
Surface is about the room
This one is not a matter of taste.
A route print is a large field of one colour with a thin line across it. That empty field is most of the object, and a gloss finish makes it reflective. Every window and every lamp appears in the paper, and the reflection is exactly where the drawing is not.
Matte scatters. You can hang it opposite a window and still read it. On a two-colour print there is no colour depth being sacrificed — that argument applies to photographs, where gloss genuinely helps saturation.
There is no case for gloss here.
So
You pick the weight: Museum 250 gsm or Classic 170 gsm, both uncoated matte. The 250 is an offwhite archival stock. It is heavy enough to hand over unframed, it does not curl out of the tube, and it does not crease at the corner while you get it into a frame. The 170 is the lighter one, and behind glass it does the same job.
70×100 is made in the 250 only. At that width the lighter sheet bends under itself.
Both papers are offered framed and loose. Behind glazing nobody touches the paper and nobody sees its edge, so the frame and the glass carry the object, and the weight is the smaller decision there. Loose, the paper is handled every time the print is moved, and that is where the 250 earns the difference.
The colourway is ink, not paper
Natural, Night, Signature and Ember all flood the whole sheet with ink, edge to edge. Natural is a warm off-white — close to the 250's own shade, but ink all the same — so on none of the four does the stock's own colour show through. What the weight changes is how the sheet handles and how it holds up, not what it looks like from a metre away.
And what actually matters more
The line is printed at 300 dpi from vector geometry, not from a screenshot. That is the difference you can see across a room, and it is the same on either weight.
Questions people actually ask
- Which papers can I choose between?
- Two, both uncoated matte: Museum 250 gsm, an offwhite archival stock, and Classic 170 gsm. The 250 is heavy enough to hand over unframed and flattens out of the tube sooner than the lighter sheet. 70×100 is made in the 250 only.
- Why not glossy?
- Because a route print is mostly a single line on a large empty field, and a gloss finish turns that field into a mirror. Every lamp in the room lands on the paper.
- Does the paper change the colours?
- The paper does, slightly: uncoated stock holds a fractionally deeper black and a warmer white. But the colourway is ink, not paper, and all four flood the field, so the stock's own colour does not show through on the finished print.
- Is the framed print on the same paper?
- It can be. Both weights are offered framed and loose. Behind glazing nobody handles the paper and nobody sees its edge, so the weight is the smaller decision there.
YOURS, FROM A FILE, IN 90 SECONDS
One effort. One sheet of paper.
Bring the file and every choice is yours: paper, treatment, colour, which numbers come along. Uncoated matte in 250 or 170 gsm, made to order at the facility nearest you, rolled in a tube or framed flat in a box.
Print it. FROM 319 kr