What Size Binder Do I Need? Pages, Tabs and Sheet Protectors

What size binder do you need? Most people guess. Then the binder won't close.

Start with the pages, and the paper. Copy paper, letterhead, and premium stock are all different thicknesses.

Now add your tab dividers — and this is where guesses go wrong. A ninety pound index tab is nearly twice as thick as a sheet of copy paper. Plastic tabs, four times.

Sheet protectors bulk a binder faster than anything. Each one adds about six thousandths of an inch beyond what's inside it.

Two hundred fifty pages and eight tabs is just over an inch of paper. That's a two inch round ring binder — or a one and a half inch D ring.

Same size on the label, different capacity. A round ring drags pages once the stack passes about three quarters of the ring. A D ring's flat side carries nearly all of it.

And we always leave fifteen percent of room. A binder filled to the rings tears pages at the holes.

Size the binder here, then divide it properly. Tabzoola — custom index tabs, made in the U S A, at tabzoola dot com.