Uses of Archival Paper

When you first approach your printer for information and quotations on your printing project, they will have asked you what you intend to use the document for. This not only allows them to suggest appropriate styles and finishes for the paper and printing, but also to gauge the required longevity of their printed project.

For example, if you are organising the printing of annual reports of business cards, you don’t expect that they would need a particularly long lifespan, certainly they wouldn’t need to match the human lifespan. However, if you are printing documents for archival purposes, whether they are books, histories or collections, you will need to use the correct archival paper.

Archival paper is alkaline and won’t deteriorate over time. They are acid free and have a pH of between 7.5 and 8.5, they include 2% of calcium carbonate as an alkaline reserve and do not contain ground wood, or unbleached wood fibres. While regular paper will serve its purpose for many, many years if kept dry and away from sunlight, there is no way that ordinary paper could compete with archival paper which can survive for over 100 years.

Paper with such neutral properties is specially developed to preserve your print projects for, most likely, longer than you can preserve yourself. This is especially important if your business regularly works with collectors and creates books or albums for them to keep their collections in, or you may work with family histories and want to give your customers a copy of their heritage which will survive several generations.

Whatever the reason, when using archival paper it is important that you not only consider the longevity of the paper, but also of the printing and your printer will be able to recommend the best inks and techniques for preserving a precious part of history.

For more information about printing on archival paper or printing for longevity, contact Print Compare now.