Long Haul Printer Paper Options

When I say “long haul”, I’m referring to printer paper that can take abuse. Printer paper by nature is fairly chintzy. Even a piece of paper that’s less than 3 months old can start to yellow with age. Sometimes you need better paper. Here are your options.

Paper that “soaks” better

You’ve most likely used fancy paper before, maybe for use as a job resume. This paper does typically soak up the ink better and is thicker, so it will last longer. But unfortunately it will yellow just as easily as regular printer paper will.

Synthetic waterproof paper

This is the good stuff. Graytex offers this for sale, and yes it’s expensive at roughly $1.00 per sheet, but for long haul printouts that will last and last, this is the type of paper you want.

When would you need “tough” paper like this?

Here’s a few good examples:

• Vehicle insurance cards. The insurance card you get in the mail is usually on a chintzy perforated cut piece of paper. It easily gets destroyed just by being in your glovebox from heating, cooling and condensation – even when you keep it in an envelope. If you go online to your insurance co.’s web site, login to your account and print the card to synthetic waterproof paper, this will last much longer and won’t require extra protection.
• Dirty work areas. You’ll notice that even in a plastic protection sheet, regular printer paper still gets wrecked too easily. If you have printouts tacked to the wall containing instructions or the like and need that print to stay there for a long time, the synthetic stuff will work out much better.
• Outdoors. There may be instances where you need to post some type of documentation outdoors (such as in a garden or wooded area), but you don’t want to spend the cash for a hard plastic or steel printed sign because it’s too cost prohibitive. Using synthetic paper covered by a hard plastic transparency will do the trick here. It will not start to crinkle/fold or get browned edges anywhere near as quickly as normal paper does.
• Laminating. Regular printer paper is horrible for laminate because you can’t put a thick coat on it without destroying the paper. The synthetic stuff on the other hand can handle a good thick laminate for long haul use.

How to use synthetic waterproof paper properly

They must be used with a laser printer. If you try to print to one with inkjet, the ink will smudge all over the place and won’t soak into the paper properly. Using laser is the only thing you need to do in order to print to synthetic properly.

Does the synthetic feel like regular printer paper?

The best way to answer this is “sort of”. You can drape, fold and roll it just like regular paper, but the composition of it feels distinctively different. You’ll also notice it doesn’t stack as well as normal printer paper does. But then again you probably wouldn’t be stacking heavy stock like this anyway.

Will a regular home laser printer be able to use the synthetic paper properly?

Yes. The rollers in your home laser printer should have no problems using the synthetic heavy stock. If it can handle resume style fancy paper, it can handle the synthetic stuff too.

Waterproof not required but rather just tough?

If you don’t need totally waterproof paper but just something that can take a lot of abuse, go with the Ruff N Tuff series instead. It’s about half the price of the fully waterproof paper.