If you follow my blog it probably won’t come as a surprise to you when I say: I hate stitched notebooks. Why do I hate them so much?

1. Pages don’t tend to lay flat

It drives me mental having to hold the pages open with one hand and awkwardly try and write with the other – especially if I’m ruling lines for bullet journaling. To get around this I use a butterfly clip to hold the pages open but I still much prefer when the pages just lay flat on their own.

Related: How to choose the right bullet journal notebook for you (10 things to check)

2. Yellow paper

I don’t know why, but the majority of stitched notebooks have gross yellow paper. Highlighters look weird, pen colors aren’t as bright and the yellow paper just looks cheap.

Related: Tombow Brush Pen Testing in 8 Different Bullet Journals

3. Bleed through and pen ghosting

I don’t know what it is about stitched notebooks but the paper quality is rarely good. They’re prone to pens ghosting, bleeding through or indenting on the back side of the pages.

Related: Moleskine Weekly Planner Review 

The only exception to this that I’ve found to date is the Clever Fox planner.

Clever Fox Weekly Planner Review

4. Page size

Although there are some stitched notebooks in my favorite page size (7 x 9″ – like most planners) they are few and far between. I find the usual A5 or around 5 x 8″ sizes of stitched notebooks are too small – especially for list making – you have to write super small if you want to fit 2 columns.

Related: Pretty dot grid notebooks for bullet journaling (roundup)

5. Expensive for what you get

For a simple notebook with just dot grid, lined or blank pages, a plain cover and an elastic band you’d think it’d be cheap… yet they’re not. For the same price or around $10 more I can upgrade to a much prettier notebook without sewn binding. E.g. Plum Paper, Happy Planner

Much prettier, better value and discbound (add, remove and rearrange pages as often as you like!)

MAMBI Happy Planner Happy Notes Review

6. Boring cover

Black, black, or black? How about purple? Or blue? Or pink? Apart from the Leuchtturm and a handful of others, most stitched notebooks have a boring black cover with nothing else on it.

Plus, the covers are the same width as the pages, so if you add your own tabs they stick out beyond the cover and get damaged quickly. The ribbon bookmarks that come with these types of notebooks are handy but 2 or 3 is not enough to organize an entire bullet journal.

Related: Review of the Scrivwell Dot Grid Notebook

7. Not all have page numbers

If you’re bullet journaling, I wouldn’t even look at a notebook that doesn’t have numbers pre-printed on the pages.

Don’t forget to check for the placement of the numbers too. The Rhodia Goal book, for whatever reason that makes no sense to me, prints the page numbers in the dot grid.

If you do accidentally purchase a notebook that doesn’t have page numbers, they can be used for drawing up bullet journal spreads.

I use my Minimalism Art notebook for sketching layout ideas

More planner reviews

• Travel planning in a bullet journal
• Review of the Scrivwell Dot Grid Notebook
• Pretty dot grid notebooks for bullet journaling (roundup)

Planning tips

• 52 Lessons learned after trying 52 different planners in 52 weeks
• Travel planning in a bullet journal
• Bullet Journal Ideas: 26 Weekly Spread Layouts to Try

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