The best millimeter paper
Graph Paper – Buying Guide, Opinions and Analysis
Despite an electronic age that offers to automate and simplify everything, daily tasks and manual work with graph paper in art, mathematics, engineering and architecture continue to benefit from the use of these graph sheets. The Canson 200067106 pad offers 50 sheets of basic graph paper, perfect for making scale drawings or statistical projections. For its part, the Chartwell J13BZ is a pad that brings 30 millimeter sheets of A3 format designed both for school projects and for graphic and measurement applications at a professional level.
The 9 Best Graph Papers – Opinions 2022
Currently, you can find various manufacturers that offer different formats of this paper with very small squares. Next, we present you 9 alternatives that are among the most used to capture on them representations of graphics, sketches and even plans.
A4 graph paper
1. Canson Bloc Enc A4, 50 Sheets, Millimetric
The A4 graph paper option is one of the sheet designs that should not be missing from the work items of any engineer or designer. When the muse of creativity needs to project ideas onto a real plane, then all you have to do is remove one of the 50 sheets that this pad comes with.
The presentation of one of the best graph papers of 2022 comes in a glued pad with a rigid back that allows you to tear each page without affecting the others. In case you want to file your work when you’re done, this grid sheet comes with enough margin on its left side to perforate and place it in a folder.
It is a pad that has the advantage of being among the cheapest and, in addition, offering great quality on its grain-free white paper with squares outlined with fine sepia lines.
In addition to being a graph paper with grids of 1,5,10 and 50 mm, the sheets of this pad have other important details.
Pros
Size: The pad has A4 size sheets whose measurements of 21 x 29.7 cm are the standard format for international use.
Design: The paper shows more prominent lines every 5 centimeters for a better visual location when working.
Quantity: The number of 50 millimeter sheets in this pad is more than enough for school work.
Drawing: The characteristics of the paper allow drawing, tracing or writing with a pencil, ballpoint pen and tubular tip markers.
Cons
Weight: Although its weight of 90 g/m2 is good for ballpoint ink, a higher weight is more convenient and resistant if you want to make prints.
2. Liderpapel ML97 Block graph paper glued
Since 1976, this brand has been on the market offering assorted articles made of paper and very convenient for various educational activities. They are notebooks and pads manufactured with advanced technology that provide their qualities at very affordable costs.
Among the thousands of items this manufacturer produces daily, this could be considered the best value graph paper pad you could get. Its glued spine allows easy and clean detachment from the top of each sheet.
In addition to this, the characteristics of this A4 graph paper make it ideal for work with mathematics and bar graphs. Each sheet measures 21cm x 29.7cm and features sepia printed lines that form 2mm grids, giving ample, well-marked space as a guide for drawings or any other type of sketching.
Being among the cheapest alternatives is part of its biggest advantages. However, more positive aspects can be emphasized.
Pros
A4: It is a paper with one of the most usual and functional formats in school and office contexts.
Quantity: With its good price, you are acquiring a pad of 50 millimeter sheets that will be very useful for various drawings.
Brand: Liderpapel is a brand that has stood out for more than 40 years in the sector with quality products.
Cons
Grid: Unlike other designs that stand out on the same sheet 1, 5 and 10 mm, the grid of this option is only 2 mm.
Graph paper for graphs
3. Chartwell J13BZ Graph Paper, 30 Count, A3 Size
This option will serve its function very well as graph paper for graphs or comparative charts that you need to file. Not only has the design been taken care of, but also the material used to make the paper. This is a manufacturer that stands out for taking care of the production of the paper that is used in its own products.
Each sheet of graph paper is A3 format and is also certified acid-free. This is a characteristic that helps its chemical composition remain intact over time and that contact with light does not cause damage or deterioration to the paper.
The 30 sheets have a grid of 1 mm per small square and 5 or 10 mm in each set delimited by the thicker lines. So its design is designed to facilitate the location of the points to be plotted.
Let’s learn more about the pros and cons that this product presents and that are important to consider when deciding on your purchase.
Pros
Series: It is part of a series of products called the gold line in which its brand includes notebooks and pads of the highest quality.
Uses: Allows clean work on any project that requires this type of paper in school, office and art activities.
Acid-free: Being an acid-free paper, exposure to light will not deteriorate it and it will last for a long time.
Cons
Color: If you usually work with the common sepia color, its aquamarine lines may feel strange at first.
4. Rhino Graph Paper, 50 sheets, A4 size
It’s a 50-sheet pad that could turn into 100 pages of the best graph paper on the market. On the one hand, the sheet presents its millimetric format of 1, 5 and 10 mm for the representation of mathematical and scientific data and, on the other hand, its white color allows making numerical or explanatory annotations of the graph drawn.
It is 100% recyclable premium paper with sufficient thickness and quality to be able to write on both sides and thus have maximum use. Plus, its A4 measurements of 21cm wide and 29.7cm high give you plenty of room to draw and write.
It is a paper with grids printed with water-based ink and without any solvent. It has been produced by one of the leading manufacturers of educational stationery in the United Kingdom, which is also concerned with environmental care.
It also has more attributes that could make many consider it as the best graph paper of the moment.
Pros
Perforations: It has a wide margin on the left side with two custom perforations in case you want to keep it in a folder.
Quality: It is high quality white paper with an ideal smoothness for tracing on both sides of the sheet.
Recyclable: It is 100% recyclable paper, whose raw material has been obtained from sustainable European forests.
Cons
Light Lines: If you are doing manual tracing, the light blue printing of the center lines may make them difficult to see.
A3 graph paper
5. Brunnen 104737001 Graph paper A3, 20 sheets
If you like intense colors and don’t mind breaking away from the usual white background and soft line colors, then this A3 graph paper alternative is for you. Its vivid red hue fills the blade, which measures 29.7 cm wide and 42 cm high.
It is a pad that brings together 20 sheets of millimetric design with clearly recognizable lines. These can be very useful both for data of mathematical complexity in studies such as the design of plans for home remodeling projects or distribution of spaces.
For some people, this might be the best graph paper when it comes to evaluating layout design, color, and size. In addition to all this, it has a surface mass of 80g/m2 which makes it convenient to write, trace and draw on.
Let’s review the qualities that Brunnen has put into their product and make it make the list of the best.
Pros
A3: If you need a large paper to capture your drawing, this A3 format is equivalent to two A4 sheets joined lengthwise.
Erasing: Its weight of 80 g/m2 is considered suitable for the paper to be resistant to tracing and erasing.
Color: Its red color creates a very attractive leaf whose millimeters are clearly visible.
Cons
Quantity: Its 20 sheets seem few when compared to other options that have more at affordable prices.
6. Ursus 7074000 Graph Block A3, 25 Sheets
If you are looking for the best A3 graph paper to represent surfaces or objects to scale, the proposal of the German brand Ursus is one of the most remarkable. It provides ample space of 29.7 cm x 42 cm so that 3D objects, maps or diagrams can be represented technically and accurately.
It is a 25-sheet pad made of white paper that reveals the millimetric format in its center and margins on all four sides that could be useful if you want to make holes to save your work.
The grid of each sheet presents well-highlighted 1 mm squares, ideal for tracing and easy identification when reading the information. It has a grammage of 80 g/m2 that allows it to withstand tracing with pencil and fine marker pens with tubular tips.
If you are wondering which graph paper to buy to make calculations and draw to scale, reviewing the characteristics of this product can help you in your decision.
Pros
Division: These are grids of 1 mm each that are visibly marked and allow you maximum precision in drawing the figures.
Quality: The quality of the paper absorbs pencil strokes, pens and even colored markers well.
Uses: They are millimeter sheets to be used both in school projects and at a professional level.
Cons
Number of Sheets: If you need the frequent use of graph paper in an engineering or architecture office, 25 sheets might be a bit low.
Graph paper Din A4
7. Rhino Graph paper, A4 format
If you are looking for Din A4 graph paper for creativity and constant work, these 500 graph paper sheets are the ideal quantity to forget about frequent purchases and have enough available for each moment in which they are needed.
Although its weight of 75 g/m2 is less than ideal for printing, it is a sheet with good qualities and smoothness for drawing art sketches, statistical calculations and various bar diagrams that are made by hand. Similarly, it is the standard graphic paper used in the educational area.
It is A4 in size with measurements of 21cm wide and 29.7cm high showing a format of intersecting thin blue lines that form 1, 5 and 10mm squares. These lines have been printed with water-based ink without the use of any type of chemical.
Let’s see more pros and cons of this product manufactured by one of the most recognized brands in the United Kingdom as a leading provider of stationery.
Pros
Size: Its A4 size is the standard for school and college work. Also, it can be easily archived.
Recyclable: In addition to printing its lines with water ink, it is a paper made to be 100% recyclable.
Quantity: The number of 500 millimeter sheets in combination with a good price make this pad a very convenient purchase.
Cons
Grammage: The paper has a density of 75 g/m2 which, most likely, will reveal what has been done in ink on the other side of the page.
Canson graph paper
8. Canson 402863 Drawing Pad, 50 Sheets
The Basik line is the one created by the brand to bring the best Canson graph paper to the market in various types of formats. This is the glued pad with A3 size sheets that allows a smooth and damage-free detachment of each sheet.
In addition to its large dimensions of 29.7 cm x 42 cm, the cream background of the sheet and the printing of its lines in brown allow an ideal visualization for the elaboration of graphic representations in pencil, pens and markers. Also, it is glossy paper that makes the pen flow very well and the graphite is erased without marks.
There are 50 sheets of 100 g/m2 weight, which makes them highly recommended as graph paper for printers. So your work will be very well captured whether you do it by hand or from the computer to the printer.
The range of supplies for school drawing could position Canson as the best brand of graph paper. Here more features to consider of the product.
Pros
Weight: Its weight of 100 g/m2 makes it very resistant and suitable if you want to use it for printing.
Erasing: Both its glossy characteristic and its weight allow the strokes to be erased and the sharpness of the lines to remain intact.
Price: This is a purchase with one of the best costs that provides quality and quantity of millimeter sheets.
Cons
Gloss: Its glossy characteristic may make the paper look very shiny and it may not seem so suitable for tracing with graphite.
Graph paper for climograms
9. Landré DIN A3 millimeter pad
Landré brings its alternative to DIN A3 millimeter sheets in a glued pad from which it will be possible to easily peel them off one by one. Its design is specially designed to provide a solution as graph paper for climograms, since its grid lends itself in dimensions to be able to draw axes and bars with amplitude.
It has a sufficient width of 29.7 cm for the horizontal axis that covers the twelve months of the year and a height of 42 cm to accurately trace the vertical axes that indicate both precipitation and temperature.
So if you are wondering what is the best graph paper to make climographs, branch diagrams or scale maps, this is a great option. As if all this were not enough, its Ecolabel label recognizes it in Europe and the world as a product with high environmental standards.
In addition to being one of the most common formats next to A4, Landré A3 graph paper has more to offer.
Pros
Ecological: It is a paper that has won the Ecolabel label that certifies it as recyclable and friendly to the environment.
Pad: It is a glued pad that allows you to detach the sheets without problem. In addition, it has a cardboard on the back to give it firmness.
Colour: Both the soft lines and the most accentuated ones are perfectly perceptible with its sepia color.
Cons
Quantity: It is only 20 sheets in the pad. There are alternatives that double this number for cheaper costs.
Shopping guide
Although it is undeniable that CAD software has largely replaced manual drawing with computer-assisted automated processes, it is still relevant in important areas such as art with quick sketches or mathematics with the elaboration of graphics. This guide to buying the best graph paper can help you choose the most convenient graph paper for you.
grid type
As the name of the paper indicates, the grid of this type of sheet is designed using the measurement in millimeters as a base. However, when comparing graph papers, you realize that the format of their tables is achieved with vertical and horizontal lines that intersect each other and mark both millimeters and centimeters.
So, within the options, you can find gridded formats equally marked with 2mm measurements or with individual 1mm squares that are graphically grouped by lines that can form grids of 5, 10, 25 and even 50mm.
These formats are highly valued by disciplines that need great precision when representing data. These include geometry, architecture, topography, geography, engineering, and design, among others.
Size
ISO 216: 2007 is an international standard that applies the appropriate sizes to cut the paper according to the use that is going to be given to them, such as forms, posters or sheets for administrative or technical use. In the case of graph paper, you will see references to formats referred to as DIN A.
Usually it is DIN A3 and DIN A4 that are used. The A4 with its measurements of 21 cm wide and 29.7 cm high is usually cheaper, as well as widely recommended for educational use. Therefore, it is the best selection when it comes to school or university work in which the drawing of geometric figures and statistical representations are the objective.
For its part, the measures of 29.7 cm wide and 42 cm high of the A3 are perfect when you want to make large graphs or diagrams with many branches.
Presentation
Both the style of presentation format and the quantity vary a lot, and usually how much graph paper costs depends on these characteristics. The glued pad is one of the most popular presentations, since it makes it easy to have 12, 20, 25 or even 50 sheets joined in a block and be able to easily detach them individually.
There are brands like Canson that also use envelopes that also offer the advantage of functioning as folders to transport the graph paper. Likewise, they could come perforated or not and loose in packages of up to 500 ideal sheets to have in stock.
For printers, special graph paper presentations are available in reels or rolls, ideal for electrocardiograms and even making patterns.
Grammage
The first thing is to be clear that your choice of grammage does not necessarily have to do with thickness. In fact, it is perfectly possible that two sheets of the same grammage have different thicknesses. However, you can determine the transparency and strength of the paper.
Whatever the presentation of the graph paper, the weight of the paper in grams per square meter is usually specified on its cover and is expressed as g/m2. This is one of the important selection features when printing.
Therefore, if the drawings of maps, sketches or graphs are to be done by hand, a paper between 75 and 90 g/m2 is suitable for graphite, ballpoint pen and colored markers. On the other hand, the resistance of a grammage of 100 g/m2 and above is the best when it comes to printers.
Colour
Commonly, sepia is the color used in the grid format of graph paper. However, many brands break with this pattern and offer, among their variety, other soft tones such as blue, green and cream, among others.
There are some even bolder papers that have strong colors like red or brown. The choice is a matter of taste. However, the best recommendation is that you select shades in which the visual appreciation of the lines is comfortable.
If you choose very light tones, they can take a lot of effort for your eyes to locate each line and, if the lines are very dark, they may not allow your pencil or pen trace to stand out. So the best are graph papers with light backgrounds whose dividing lines are noticeable without being so dark as to hide your lines.
Frequently asked questions
Q1: How to use graph paper?
Whether in loose sheets or pads, graph paper is a format of thin, criss-cross lines designed to be used as a guide when you need to graph data from experiments, statistics, diagrams, and more. In the medical part, it is highly used for electrocardiograms.
However, beyond these uses, you could also use it as a guide to give structure to letters and drawings that you can later transfer to a blank sheet of paper. In the same way, it’s great how it can help in a remodel to plan the layout of new furniture or spaces using its millimeters to bring reality to a smaller scale.
Q2: How to make a topographic map on graph paper?
The cut or profile of the topographic map of a specific area is made on the graph paper using the contour lines that show the points that are located at the same height above sea level. Two cuts are made in the map at each end and are used to align and position the graph paper.
To reflect the altitude accurately, a vertical axis with meters to scale is drawn on the paper. At the top of the paper, each of the contour lines found is marked. Afterwards, each mark is projected to the corresponding altitude with a point and, when all the points are obtained, they are joined with a realistic line that shows peaks and depressions.
Q3: What does 1 mm equal to on the graph paper where an EKG is recorded?
To represent and understand the electrical activity of the heart, the knowledge of how to read the electrocardiogram is essential. It is usually recorded on the standard grid of 5 small squares of 1 mm each.
Depending on whether the vertical or horizontal axis is to be read, each mm has a different interpretation. The vertical axis contemplates millivolts mV that measure the amplitude of the electrical current. Therefore, each small square of 1 mm is equivalent to 0.1 mV. The horizontal axis measures time and, in this case, every 0.4 seconds is represented by a 1mm square.
Q4: How to print on graph paper?
Printing on graph paper is no different than printing on plain white paper. In general, most printers accept the A4 format, although some printers are also sized for A3 sheets.
If what you need is to print plans, technical drawings or maps, a plotter is the most recommended. Either way, the steps will always be the same from the computer. You must open the file you want to print and configure the page, either by selecting one of the default sizes on the printer or by using the option to customize the page size.
Q5: How do you graph on graph paper?
Graph paper stands out for graphing data since its design of lines and measurements in millimeters allow data to be easily located and tabulated in the form of columns, rows, bars or lines. Graphs usually require drawing two lines perpendicular to each other. A horizontal one that will be the abscissa axis and a vertical one for the ordinate axis.
Each axis is identified with the unit that it is going to represent and that could be meters, seconds, degrees centigrade and more. In the same way, the scale of values that each centimeter will have is written.
Q6: Which is better, graph paper in roll or sheets?
It all depends on the purpose and frequency of use. For example, for a medical facility that specializes in EKGs or an individual that uses varying amounts to build patterns, buying graph paper on a roll is the best option. This allows you to cut and use without waste only what is needed of paper.
On the other hand, millimeter sheets are the most used for school work and architecture or engineering offices. The A4 and A3 formats are used for these purposes.
Q7: How to make a climogram on graph paper?
Every millimeter of paper is important to adequately represent the months of the year, as well as the values of rainfall and temperature in an area. A central axis is drawn on the sheet that must be divided into 12 equal parts for the months.
Perpendicularly, on the left side, the axis for temperature is divided from 5 to 5 ºC and that for precipitation on the right by 10 mm, taking care that the ratio between the two is always 2 to 1.
Once the axes are drawn, the data is then transferred to the graph with blue bars for precipitation and red dots on each bar for temperature. Being the twelve points, these are joined with a line that will culminate the elaboration of the climogram.
