Which Binding Is Best for Your Journal?

Three bindings cover the vast majority of journal and planner projects, and each has a feature that decides when it’s the right answer.

Smyth-sewn binding is used for casebound hardcover books, where pages are stitched into signatures rather than glued. Its defining advantage is design: because there’s a spine, your cover artwork can wrap the whole book, and you can print on the spine itself - which matters if the product will ever sit on a shelf facing outwards. It suits hardcover books, sketchbooks, planners and journals, and all things being equal it tends to cost a little less than Wire-O.

Wire-O - also called twin loop, double-loop or double-O - gives a sophisticated, polished look and works particularly well with vegan leather, linen, and both hard and soft covers. It comes in many metallic and custom colours, is ideal for journals and planners under about 250 pages, and is often a little less expensive to produce than spiral. Spiral, or coil, binding suits both soft and hard covers, uses a durable plastic or metal coil, and opens a full 360 degrees so pages lie completely flat. It handles higher page counts - 250-plus in most cases - and is the natural choice when you’re using index tabs, since the coil accommodates them cleanly.