Dot Grid Paper

My bullet journal, open to a blank spread and photographed at an angle. You can see the ribbons in various shades of blue coming out the bottom of the journal.Dot grid paper! Beloved of all sorts of folks, especially in the bullet journal community. It makes laying out page templates much simpler, works for writing vertically or horizontally, and so on.

I’ve been using a pdf a very kind friend made for me years ago when I bind bullet journals for myself and the occasional customer, but I finally found a tutorial that made sense and can now generate my own! All different colors, and a handful of different sizes too. Behold:

How To Make Dot Grid Paper for Your Bullet Journal Using Google Sheets, By Cristina Morero

Also, here it is over on the Wayback Machine in case something happens to that page. Ya never know!

I did have to make one tweak to the tutorial, though – pixels aren’t perfectly square, apparently, so setting the height and width to the same number of pixels gives you a rectangular grid rather than a square one. I did some experiments and a bit of web searching to get the ratio right – 16px high by 17px wide and 19px high by 20px wide are the sizes I like.

Doubtless, if I had fancier software and more knowhow I’d be able to do any size I wanted and just generate an image at a higher resolution or something, but I am not a graphic designer. I do have Google Sheets though!

So now I can make dot grid paper in two sizes and numerous colors!

I created basic grids in dark gray: 19px in Dark Gray 2 and 16px in Dark Gray 2

And there’s also these samplers, which will give you a rough idea of what the dots look like at different sizes and in different colors! 19px sampler and 16px sampler of course, my printer and your printer will differ a bit, colorwise, but it gives you a good idea.

I’m excited about the possibilities here – I love picking materials that have overlapping color palettes, and now I can do dot grids in various colors to match the bindings! Yes, I am a giant nerd. But it’s cool, right?

Are you interested in ordering a custom book with dot grid pages? Drop me a line! I love binding custom books.