Duplex Wedding Invitations
Duplexing bonds two sheets face to face; triplexing sandwiches a third in the middle. It buys two things at once — thickness that single sheets cannot reach, and a visible core stripe of a contrasting colour running around the whole edge. It also gives each face its own body of paper, so both sides can be letterpressed deeply without the impressions fighting through.
What people actually ask
- What thickness is a duplex wedding invitation?
- Two 220lb cotton sheets bonded together land around 600gsm — roughly a credit card doubled. Triplex with a coloured core goes thicker again and is where the edge stripe becomes a design element.
- Why duplex instead of buying a thicker sheet?
- Because the thickest sheets do not come in every colour, and because duplexing lets the two faces differ — ivory outside, a saturated core, and both sides pressed without showthrough.
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Duplexing bonds two sheets face to face so they behave as one card. Triplexing sandwiches a third sheet in the middle. What you get is thickness a single sheet cannot reach, plus a line of colour running around all four edges where the layers meet. On a wedding invitation, that edge is the first thing a guest sees when the card slides out of the envelope, and the first thing their thumb finds. Below is how the build works, where it goes wrong, and what it lets the press do that a single sheet won't allow.
Two sheets bonded face to face behave like one card, not two
A duplex starts as two finished sheets. Each one is printed, pressed and dried on its own, then the two are mounted back to back and pressed flat until they read as a single board.
The result is stiff in a way that mill-made sheets of the same caliper are not. A duplex doesn't flop when a guest holds it by one corner. It knocks against a tabletop with a low sound rather than a rattle. Triplex adds a third sheet in the middle and pushes all of that further, plus it gives you a core in a colour neither face is wearing.
The core stripe is the whole point, and the first place a build shows its seams
That contrasting line around the edge is what people buy duplex for. It is also unforgiving. If the two faces shift even slightly during mounting, the stripe drifts off centre and reads thicker on one edge than the other. Cards are mounted first and trimmed after for exactly that reason, so a single clean cut passes through every layer at once.
Grain matters too. Sheets bonded with their fibres running crosswise fight each other as they settle, and the card cups. We match grain direction between layers so the finished card lies flat in the hand.
Why deep letterpress on both sides needs a duplex
Press a deep impression into a single sheet and you get a bruise on the back. Push the front and the back on the same sheet and the two impressions meet somewhere in the middle, flattening each other and leaving a mottled surface.
A duplex ends that argument. Each face has its own body of paper to absorb the hit, and the bond line stops the impression travelling through. So the front can carry your names in a deep bite and the back can carry the details just as deeply, with both faces smooth and unmarked behind their own type.
Common questions
A duplex is two sheets bonded face to face. A triplex sandwiches a third sheet between them. Duplex gives you thickness and a two-layer edge. Triplex gives you more thickness again and a distinct middle band of colour, which is how you get a coloured core between two pale faces.
Need the entire invitation suite drawn?
Invitation, RSVP, details and envelope composed for this stock and finish, with press-ready files for each piece.