Paper Review: Midori Color Paper Notebooks

Today I’m taking a look at a new notebook from Midori – the A5 Color Paper Notebook. I did order a notebook in each color – pink, yellow, turquoise, green, lavender, brown. They only come in ruled, A5 size with 56 pages and you can find these in-stock at Vanness for $3.50 each.

I chose the brown notebook for this review. The paper is a light tan color and I’ve found it can look quite different based on lighting and surroundings.

The notebook is made of 14 pieces of paper folded to make a single signature of 28 sheets or 56 pages (if you number front and back, the final number will be 56). It is held together with brass colored staples inside a thick cardstock cover.

I chose the brown notebook for this review since it is the least cheerful of the lineup – my reasoning was, if I love the brown notebook, I’ll have no problem loving the other colors!

I love these bright colors! They are perfect right now in the spring – cheerful, happy, lovely color.

The pages are a pastel version of the cover page in each notebook. Above, from top to bottom – turquoise, lavender, green, brown, pink, yellow. Showing the pages next to each other like this is really the best way to give a good idea of the paper color – without a point of reference, they can be tough to photograph.

So, on with the brown notebook. It will stay open on its own if given a bit of encouragement. The paper itself is thick – I would estimate 80-100 gsm although I can’t find a specific weight. The notebooks are made by Midori but this is not MD paper.

The paper is just a tad on the toothy side of average – pencil glides over the page without slipping. I’ve added stamps to my paper tests lately since I’ve noticed that several popular papers are terrible with stamp ink including Tomoe River, onion skin, cotton, and MD. The paper in the Color Paper notebook is good at taking stamp ink but not wonderful. There was plenty of show-through but no ink bled through the page.

On the reverse side, you can see some ghosting (the photo picks up more ghosting than I saw in person) but Sharpie is the only item that actually came through the page. Even Sharpie did not bleed through onto the next page, though. I was terribly impressed with the success of the graphic pens and the brush pen!

I used the first page of the notebook for my testing. The notebook stayed open to this first page with only a little encouragement, and I found that it is a great one to use with the pages folded back on themselves if needed for one-handed use.

I’m glad I purchased the whole set of these notebooks – they are perfect for an A5 Traveler’s-style cover or an A5 Roterfaden Taschenbegleiter cover and at $3.50 each, they are well worth the cost. Plus, the color! Love the color.

Susuwatari also love color.

• Paper:  Midori Color Paper Notebook, A5 ($3.50 for 56 pages)

DISCLAIMER: Some of the items included in this review were provided to us at a discount for the purpose of review. Please see the About page for more details.