If you don't have adequate paper, you will miss out on all the enjoyment of writing with a fountain pen.

A common problem with ordinary notebooks is that they tend to have lighter, absorbent paper stock that turns into a messy mush once liquid fountain pen ink touches it.

Don't blame the notebook manufacturer.

They assume that most people, if they handwrite at all, write with a ballpoint or pencil.

For fountain pen geeks like myself, we love to be persnickety about our paper, not just because we spend the extra money and we like to spend extra money.

It's because we want our writing experience to be the best.

And believe it or not, the best paper isn't going to cost a fortune to obtain.

In this video, I share what makes a notebook great for fountain pens and give you a select list of recommendations for fountain pen-friendly paper notebooks available at Goldspot.

To illustrate the differences in paper types, I inked three pens.

We have the Sailor ProGear 21-karat medium nib inked with Pilot Air Shizuku Compeki.

We have the Leonardo Memento Zero Grande 14-karat gold elastic fine nib, which is a fine nib that I inked with Pilot Air Shizuku. It's a flex nib and it's inked with Sailor Manyohaha.

And last but not least, we have a Lamy Safari with a 1.1 millimeter stub nib and it's inked with Waring Yule Pride and Prejudice.

So as you'll see in the writing samples, we have three different types of lines.

We have a medium monoline type pen in the medium point Sailor, which is actually more like a fine European type of nib.

Then we have a flex nib, which will give you a little bit more ink due to the ebonite feed that's here and also the line variation.

So it'll put a little bit more ink on the paper.

And then you have a stub nib, which will give you a broad stroke on the way down and it's inked with a saturated ink that has sheen.

So the Manyohaha's got shading and then the Pilot Air Shizuku Compeki is kind of like a middle of the road.

It's got a little shading and a little bit of hint of sheen.

So we'll see which papers bring this out the best.

To compare and contrast the notebooks you'd find at Gold Spot versus the ones you might pick up at a local office supply store, I grabbed a few notebooks from a local Staples.

Stay tuned to the end and I'll let you know how you can enter for a chance to win all of the notebooks I tested in this video.

So what makes the best notebook for fountain pens?

First, let's talk about what makes an unfriendly notebook for fountain pens.

First, there's feathering.

And as the name implies, feathering is when a line of ink absorbs into the page, spreading like the edges of a feather.

In this example of the Staples notepad, I took a picture of how the Manyohaha just seems to just kind of feather outwards from the edges of the letter.

It also does it a little bit too in the Air Shizuku ink as well, but it just, the line doesn't hold perfectly in a crisp edge.

Like it just feathers out slightly.

Some notebooks may even do it to a higher degree depending upon how absorbent the paper is.

And it tends to be that recycled papers usually would do this a lot more so than other types of paper.

Bleed through is when ink soaks through the entire page and is visible on the other side.

And with this Moleskine journal, which is supposed to be kind of like a premium, fancy journal, you see that on the other side of the page, the ink is seeping through on pretty much all three colors.

It's not just show through that this is bleed through onto the other side of the page.

Fountain pen friendly notebooks should not have feathering or bleed through when writing with most nib sizes and ink choices.

And I can't cover every single nib size and ink choice because there are some extreme cases where you might wanna throw in a quadruple broad or a 1.9 millimeter stub with a super saturated ink like Organic Studio Nitrogen.

And it's really going to be very, very few, even fountain pen friendly papers that can handle that sort of barrage of ink, that deluge of ink on the paper.

But when I say most, I mean, you should be able to reliably write on the page of a fountain pen friendly notebook if you have extra fine through, let's say, broad and a stub nib, or even with a flex nib.

But just as long as you're not throwing a ton of ink on the paper, I think you should be fine with a majority of notebooks, but fountain pen friendly notebooks could handle the really hardcore stuff as well.

Now, ghosting or show through is when you can see writing on the other side of the page.

Now, this is not a deal breaker for most, but paper that tends to ghost can be difficult to read if you write on both sides of the page.

Certain thin papers can handle fountain pen ink very, very well, like this Tomoe River paper that's in the Colorverse Nebula Note.

It doesn't have any feathering nor any bleed through, but it has a decent amount of show through.

So some people may only use this on one side due to the high degree of show through, which is, like I said, not a deal breaker for some, but for others who wanna use both sides of the page, yeah, pretty much.

So besides not feathering or not bleeding through, the best friendliest fountain pen papers should also have the following characteristics.

The paper should show the ink color's true brilliance and vibrance.

The paper should show the depth of shading possible with your particular nib and ink combination.

When ink pools inside each written letter, the value range should be well-defined.

For saturated inks that tend to show a metallic sheen, the paper should highlight the vibrant contrast between the base color and the reflective parts.

Last, consider the desired smoothness of your writing experience.

Do you prefer a bit of tooth to your writing surface or do you want to write on a buttered nonstick skillet?

We often focus on how smooth a nib is, but a change in paper can make a huge difference.

Another personal preference to note is the paper's color.

Some notebooks offer variations on bright white, ivory, and cream-colored paper.

These slight differences in paper color can change the ink's color appearance.

Since we're discussing the best fountain pen notebooks, much of the focus is on paper quality because, first and foremost, the paper needs to be able to handle the ink.

However, we would be remiss in not mentioning other notebook features like page size, binding, and other accoutrements like ruling, cover material, and other journal things, elastic bands, bookmarks, and all that stuff.

The value of these aspects depends on how you use your notebook, of course.

So that's why I feel there isn't one best notebook out there for all fountain pen enthusiasts, just as there isn't one best fountain pen.

I mean, some people may feel differently.

You could come at me on that.

Because writing is a personal and highly dependent on one's own workflow and writing preferences.

So I picked five of the best fountain pen notebooks that we offer on goldspot.com.

See if these might be a great fit for your writing needs.

At first, we have the Itoya Profolio Oasis Journal.

This has smooth 75 GSM cream-colored paper.

No feathering, no bleed-through.

It's a little bit of ghosting, as you might see in this writing sample that's here.

A little bit you could kind of see through, but not too much.

Perfect bound with a cardstock cover.

It lays flat, pretty much flat.

I mean, it could be encouraged a little bit to press down on the pages, but it's pretty flat.

And it has a unique sort of ruling system that incorporates lines, dot grid between the lines, and then a vertical grid as well.

And then the page is divvied up with these little markers here.

So you could use this for a variety of different purposes.

This could be like a notebook.

You could write the first draft of a short story, or you could have it as a daily log, because it does have the date at the very top corner as well.

So this could be like a workout log.

It could be a nutrition thing.

It could also, because of its grid sort of layout, you could be concocting some sort of crazy ideas, laying out designs of things, or producing webpages and stuff, all sorts of things you could design with this notebook.

And it looks pretty handsome, a little bit on the formal side, very unassuming.

It's almost as if you are carrying around a little mini pocket novel in your pocket here.

And it's also very inexpensive.

This particular book is $7.

Then they come in variety of bigger sizes as well.

Then we have Clairefontaine.

Now Clairefontaine's paper is made in France, and it has a very, very smooth 90 GSM white paper.

So this is in contrast to this cream-colored paper that you see here.

It's a very bright white paper that then would show the ink colors, I think a little bit more brighter and a little bit more vibrant on the page than the Itoya would.

And it also does very well with the feathering, no feathering, no bleed-through, very low ghosting that you would see here.

So you could see, because of the heavier paper stock, you don't see really anything on the other side of the page.

There's a lot of binding options available with Clairefontaine.

This happens to be a wire-bound pocket-type journal, but you could find perfect-bound, you could find staple-bound journals.

They have a very wide gamut of sizes as well, so you could get a full A5 or A4-size-type journal in Clairefontaine.

And it's basically for any and all reasons that you would need to write.

There's even a staple-bound notebook that has French ruling, which is interesting.

It's something that you might wanna use if you wanna practice handwriting as well, because there's a lot of smaller lines in the middle of the larger lines that could then help you with your ascenders, descenders, that sort of thing.

Then we have Rhodia pads.

And I say Rhodia pads because, I mean, Rhodia does have a lot of common DNA with Clairefontaine, a lot of the Clairefontaine paper you would see in Rhodia products.

These Rhodia pads, I think, are really great middle-of-the-road, and they're, I think, a little bit on the lesser-expensive side than a lot of the notebooks that you would see here.

I mean, these pads come in a wide array of sizes, so you could get them as small as, I think, a two-by-three, and then they go all the way up to legal and larger-type sizes.

So any and all types of projects that you need to imagine, a Rhodia pad's gonna be able to handle it.

And this is my pad of choice, and you might've seen this on a lot of Instagram and TikTok and YouTube shorts.

I usually will use this to test pens with, because I kind of feel like it's the bridge between the really super-premium fountain pen papers, like the Japanese-type papers, and the more affordable type of papers that are out there, where it's going to do pretty well in terms of handle, the fountain pen ink.

As you can see, there's no feathering, no bleed-through, minimal show-through, and it just is a very bright, nice, white paper that they use with this.

I prefer usually using the dot grid, but there's also blank, lined, and graph formats as well.

So really, you have a lot of different choices to go through with Rhodia, and you also have things like their goal book, which is more of a traditional journal, kind of like this Endless Recorder.

They have stickers on, and a lot of other staple-bound and other types of formats as well.

So a lot that Rhodia has to offer.

As a very affordable option, that's why I would pick this as one of my favorites.

Now, I feel like one of the best fountain pen papers out there, and I think a lot of hardcore fountain pen enthusiasts would agree, is Tomoe River.

I fell in love with Tomoe River paper several years ago, and have loved using notebooks with it ever since.

This actually has the 52 GSM, which is actually kind of a little bit more rare, since the original Tomoe River paper is now becoming harder to get.

They shut down the machines that make them, so there's another company that's starting to make them again, but I think they only come in the heavier 68 GSM now.

So this 52 GSM is super, super thin, almost like tracing paper, or as they call onion skin paper.

It's very, very thin paper, handles fountain pen ink like a champ.

It really does play up the color, the vibrancy.

You see a lot of the depth of shading.

The sheen is off the charts, too.

It really does do exceptionally well for fountain pen ink, and it accentuates the beauty of fountain pen ink on the paper, and that's really what you're in this game for.

This is why you're watching this video, is you wanna see what's the best of the best.

So Tomoe River is definitely on that list of the best of the best.

Really, the only downside I would say to it is if you want to write on both sides of the page, you're gonna have to deal with the show through, the ghosting on this side.

But there's really nothing like it else that's out there in terms of being able to have such a beautiful line and such a crisp-looking line, and that smoothness of the writing experience.

There's really nothing that's like it, and that's why a lot of people are trying to find other things that might replace it.

But that's why this Nebula Note is a pretty nice notebook and deserves to be on this list, is because it's a very one-of-a-kind fountain pen-loving type of paper.

And last, I have my journal of choice, which is the Endless Recorder.

And this has the new proprietary Regalia paper, which is beautiful paper.

It's got the same bright whiteness that you would see with Clairefontaine and with Rhodia.

It has a killer ability to show the shading and sheen of all fountain pen inks, especially sheen, like you're looking at this Waring Yule Pride and Prejudice ink looks amazing.

You could see that golden sheen that just vibrates off the paper.

And really, it's a lot different than, let's say, the Tomoe River paper, even though it does really show the vibrancy of the color and the shading and sheening.

It's very different because it has a lot of toothiness to the paper.

It's a very, very highly textured paper.

You could feel it.

And if you get a little bit of like hand oils on it, if you get a little bit of something on it, it's gonna end up making your nibs skid a little bit to kind of like miss the mark.

But other than that, it's a beautiful paper that has, even though it really shows the color vibrantly and it shows the depth of the color, it's hardly any show through at all.

It's very, very low ghosting.

This type of format is a little bit more of a traditional format in journal, which I enjoy for bullet journaling and for writing long form types of like, let's say, a first draft of a novel or just things like that.

You could use this and be able to utilize features like the bookmarks that's in here.

You have the inside pocket.

You have the elastic band closure.

This thing's always a magnet for stickers for me.

I like putting stickers on the cover because it's a nice, hard, durable cover that's on here.

But really, when it comes to a all-purpose sort of like landing spot for bullet journaling and for just diving deep with your thoughts every day, this is like my favorite because it does handle fountain penning so well.