Five hundred sheets of the most consequential material in human history, for about ten dollars.
| Brand | HP |
| Weight | 20 lb bond |
| Size | 8.5″ x 11″ (US Letter) |
| Brightness | 92 |
| Sheet Count | 500 (1 ream) |
| Compatibility | Inkjet, laser, copier, fax |
| Price | ~$10–$12 per ream |
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Bottom line: Reliable, consistent, unglamorous. Does exactly what printer paper should do, every time. Knowing what went into making it only makes it more interesting.
Scribbright rating: 4.4 out of 5
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A Brief History of Something You Never Think About
About 2,000 years ago, inventors in China took communication to a new level, crafting cloth sheets to record their drawings and writings. Paper was first made in Lei-Yang, China by Ts’ai Lun, a Chinese court official, who mixed mulberry bark, hemp, and rags with water, mashed the mixture into pulp, pressed out the liquid, and hung the thin mat to dry in the sun.
That basic process — pulp, press, dry — is still the foundation of every ream you buy today. The difference between Ts’ai Lun’s product and what comes out of your HP LaserJet is essentially a matter of scale, chemistry, and the relentless industrial pursuit of whiteness.
After Ts’ai Lun presented his invention to the emperor, papermaking gained popularity in China and eventually spread to the Middle East and Europe, profoundly influencing global communication and the preservation of knowledge. The Arabs learned papermaking from Chinese prisoners, establishing their own industry in 793 AD. Europe acquired it much later, with Spain learning to make paper around 1150 due to the Crusades.
For most of that intervening millennium, paper was made from rags — linen and cotton textile scraps, collected by ragpickers and reprocessed into sheets. Before the invention of bleach, papermakers seeking to produce genuinely white paper made their sheets from fine white linen. If that was unavailable, a bluing agent was added to the water to correct muddiness.
The rag supply eventually couldn’t keep up with demand. The solution, arrived at through the industrial chemistry of the 19th century, was wood pulp.
The Science of White
This is where it gets interesting.
In 1851, paper pulp was experimentally produced from wood by cooking it with caustic soda at elevated temperature and pressure. The problem was that wood pulp, left to its own devices, is not white. It is brown, or cream, or grey, depending on the species and process. The lignin holding wood fibers together resists whiteness stubbornly, and removing it without destroying the fibers took decades of industrial chemistry to solve.
The kraft pulping process produced particularly strong and durable paper but was dark in color and difficult to bleach. For many years its growth was slow because of its limitation to papers where color and brightness were unimportant. In the 1930s, bleached kraft became commercially important with the discovery of new bleaching techniques. Home Werker
Paper brightness is a measurement of how well the surface reflects light. High brightness produces paper that appears whiter and provides heavier contrast between inked letters or images and the background. When making paper, the brightness can be adjusted using minerals and dyes during the pulping process. Printing paper usually comes with brightness ratings between 80 and 113, where higher numbers indicate brighter paper. Amazon
The HP paper in this ream is rated at 92 brightness. That number represents something genuinely hard-won: for high-grade paper, wood particles are chemically treated before entering the pulper; the result is pulp that’s very white and bright, properties suited to copy and printer paper. Long fibers are favored for chemical pulp that needs to be bleached to high brightness and whiteness.
There is also the matter of the standard size itself. In 1921, the Elimination of Waste in Industry program launched by President Herbert Hoover created the Committee on the Simplification of Paper Sizes, which determined to require the standard Dutch sizing. The official 8.5″ x 11″ letter size was born. A federal efficiency committee is responsible for the dimensions of every sheet of paper in your printer. This is the kind of history hiding in plain sight. Amazon
The Texture Question
The texture of paper refers to how coarse the surface feels. Coarser printer paper is best for inkjet printing, as the fibers capture sprayed pigment and reduce bleeding. That same texture could interfere with the heating elements and toner bonding in a laser printer. For laser printers, a smoother paper is more heat resistant and a better choice for precise printing.
The HP paper threads this needle well. It’s smooth enough for laser and copier use, with enough tooth for inkjet. For a general-purpose office paper, that’s the right call, and it’s why this particular product has the market share it does.
The Verdict
There is no good reason to review printer paper. It’s paper. You put it in a tray and forget about it until you run out. But the ream sitting next to your printer is the direct descendant of a process invented by a Chinese court official nearly two thousand years ago, refined through medieval rag collection, industrial chemistry, federal standardization committees, and decades of bleaching research. Every sheet is the result of someone solving a hard problem. And that’s astonishing, when you consider it.
The HP 20 lb copy paper is reliable, consistent, and priced correctly. It will not jam your printer, ghost your documents, or give you any reason to think about it at all. Given everything that went into making it, that kind of invisibility is its own achievement.
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Michael Semer is a writer and editor who now thinks about printer paper more than anyone reasonably should.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does “20 lb” mean on printer paper? It refers to the basis weight: the weight of 500 sheets of the paper cut to its standard size before trimming. A 20 lb bond paper is standard for everyday printing. Heavier weights (24 lb, 32 lb) are thicker and used for presentations or documents meant to feel more substantial.
What is paper brightness and does it matter? Brightness measures how much light the paper surface reflects, on a scale typically from 80 to 113. Higher brightness means whiter paper with stronger contrast between ink and background. HP’s 20 lb paper is rated at 92 brightness, which is solid for everyday use. The difference becomes noticeable primarily in image printing and color documents.
Can I use this paper in both inkjet and laser printers? Yes. HP 20 lb copy paper is compatible with inkjet, laser, copier, and fax machines. The surface texture is calibrated to work across all four.
Why is standard paper 8.5″ x 11″? A 1921 federal efficiency committee under Herbert Hoover standardized US paper sizes, landing on the Dutch standard dimensions. The 8.5″ x 11″ letter size has been the US standard ever since.
Is HP printer paper acid-free? HP’s standard copy paper is manufactured to be acid-free, which means it resists yellowing over time. For documents that need to last decades, this matters. For everyday printing it’s a minor consideration.
How long does a ream of 500 sheets last? Depends entirely on print volume. A moderate home office user printing 10 to 20 pages a day can expect a ream to last three to six weeks. Heavy office use will burn through it faster.