Thick Business Cards

Thickness is measured in points (pt), where one point equals one thousandth of an inch. A standard business card is 14-16pt — thin enough to flex easily. Our thick cards start at 32pt, which is roughly the weight of a premium credit card. At 48pt, the card becomes a solid object — rigid, weighty, and impossible to bend.

Thickness comes from the paper itself or from layering. Single-ply papers like cotton, silk laminate, and soft touch are manufactured at the target weight. Triplex cards achieve thickness by bonding three layers together, which also creates a visible colored seam on the card edges.

Thickness is about weight in your hand. Surface texture is about what your fingertips feel. The same 32pt card feels completely different depending on the paper:

• Cotton is uncoated with a soft, fibrous texture and a warm off-white tone — it absorbs light and feels organic.
• Silk laminate has a smooth, satin-finish coating that gives a subtle sheen — it feels refined and polished.
• Soft touch has a velvet-like lamination that absorbs light completely — it feels like touching suede.
• Uncoated bright white has a natural, slightly rough surface with no coating — it feels clean and honest.

Each surface pairs differently with finishing techniques. Cotton takes embossing and letterpress beautifully. Silk and soft touch are ideal for spot UV, where the contrast between matte surface and glossy coating is most dramatic.

When a card is thick enough, the edges become a visible surface — a stripe of color or texture that shows when the card sits in a stack or is held between fingers. Edge painting applies opaque color to this surface. Edge foil applies metallic foil for a reflective finish. On triplex cards, the colored center layer creates its own built-in edge detail without any additional finishing.

Edge finishing is available on our 32pt Uncoated product and on all Custom Thick Cards. For a dedicated look at edge options, see our Painted Edges.