Great Big Guide to Planner Binding Options

One of the primary considerations when choosing a planner that will work well for you is the planner’s binding style. There are a number of options, and they all have different strengths and weaknesses. You may or may not find a single style that’s perfect, but you do want to at least look for the option that best balances the strengths and weaknesses to meet your particular needs.

Let’s take a look at what each style has going for it.

Ring Bound Planner (Looseleaf)

Ring-bound — or looseleaf — planners might be just about the most traditional option on the list. They’re available from classic “day planner” companies like Day-Timer, Day Runner, and Franklin Covey, as well as lesser-known or specialty brands. Given the nature of looseleaf, they’re also an easy option to “DIY” or put together yourself.

Most of the time, ring-bound planners are available in a larger size, equivalent to a standard school binder, and in what I call “half-size,” to accommodate sheets of paper somewhere in the range of 5.5×8.5 inches or 6×9 inches. Sometimes they come in smaller specialty sizes, as well.

The binders for these planners may have three rings, but often have six or seven, so be aware if you’re planning to mix-and-match components, and make sure they’re compatible. Pages with “too many” holes can often go in a binder with fewer rings (assuming they line up correctly), but pages with too few holes won’t fit in a binder with more rings unless you do some hole-punching of your own.

This style of planner is about the most flexible. It’s easy to add, remove, or rearrange pages. Even custom pages are pretty easy to add. They’re widely available, in a wide price range. And if you want to do it yourself, supplies are inexpensive and easy to come by.

If you use standard-size binders for your planner, the pages are interchangeable with your other binders, as well. Some people might appreciate the flexibility, for instance, to move prayer requests between the day planner and a quiet time binder, move recipes from a recipe binder into the day planner on grocery day, etc.

As long as your binder is good quality, so the rings don’t gap, the pages generally turn easily inside a binder, and the binding style doesn’t cause a problem unless, perhaps, you drop it hard and it pops open.

The biggest downsize I’ve found to this style of planner is bulk. A binder tends to be thick for the number of pages it can hold, because of the way the rings function.

These typically also can’t be folded all the way back on themselves.

A large proportion of those using this style of planner prefer the more compact “half sheet” size. If you’re DIY-ing a planner like this, you might be interested in some of the following components. (I like the Avery durable binders, myself.)

Avery Mini Durable Protect & Store View Binder Avery Mini Durable Binder, Bright Floral Samsill Binder, Vintage Book Style Avery Style Edge Insertable Plastic Dividers Samsill 100 Mini Sheet Protectors Avery Mini Monthly and Weekly Calendar Avery Mini Snap-In Bookmark Dividers Avery Mini Business Card Pages C-Line Poly Mini Size Binder Pocket

Flexibility:
Compactness:
Folds Back for Writing:
Ease/Affordability to Obtain*:

*For all planner styles, the sky’s the limit. You can spend big bucks “tricking out” any planner, but this ranking is based on what the average person would need to get started.

Spiralbound Planner (Wire/Coil)

This style of planner, which may be called wirebound, coil-bound, or spiral-bound, is probably the second most traditional style of binding. Spiral, or coil, binding (which is usually plastic) and wire binding are not identical styles of binding, but they’re pretty much functionally equivalent.

These planners are also available from the “big name” traditional planner companies, in a variety of sizes and formats, as well as from some independent producers. “Academic planners” intended for students planning their school year are often coil-bound or wirebound. The famous Erin Condren planners are coil-bound (except when they’re softcover; see below).

(Side note: Yes, I’m being totally inconsistent here. There doesn’t seem to be much consensus on whether these words should be hyphenated, separated, or unified, although what I’m seeing most commonly is wirebound, spiral-bound, and coil bound. Go figure.)

Back to the topic at hand. One of the strongest selling points for this style of planner is that they’re very compact. These binding methods don’t demand a lot of extra space in the binding, as compared to the thickness of the stack of pages, so the spine doesn’t add much bulk.

They can also be folded all the way in half while in use.

On the flip side, these are just about the most inflexible of the bunch. They come in the styles they come in, and that’s that. You generally can’t add custom pages. In most cases, you can’t add pages at all, although Day-Timer does have some limited options for add-in pages you can pop into their wirebound planners, and if you really need to, you can “hack” them to add custom pages by gluing or taping something on. But you can’t just easily add outside pages like you can with a looseleaf binder.

The one significant difference between a wirebound and a spiral- or coil-bound is that you may also periodically have some trouble with the coil wanting to work its way out of a spiral-bound planner. It’s generally just a minor annoyance and you can twist it back into place, but it’s something to be aware of.

Flexibility:
Compactness:
Folds Back for Writing:
Ease/Affordability to Obtain:

Disc Binding

Disc binding is a relatively new option, but it’s taken the planner world by storm because it combines some of the most desirable traits of several other methods. Perhaps the most well-known disc-bound planners are Happy Planners (pictured here), which come in complete sets, but also can be purchased in parts and pieces to build your own.

You can also find disc binding systems from companies like Levenger and…Staples? I believe the ARC brand is owned by Staples. And certain components are available from “off” brands, as well, especially from Asia.

In case you’re not familiar with this binding style, disc binding is a form of looseleaf binding where instead of having the rings open, the holes are open. The “spine” edge of the paper is punched with a series of mushroom-shaped holes, and then hollow discs are popped into those holes. The paper wraps around the “lip” of the disc the same way snap-in dividers snap onto traditional binder rings. (It’s similar to a Rolodex, if you remember those.)

Like a ring binder, these planners have complete flexibility in adding, removing, and rearranging pages. Adding your own custom pages is a little trickier, because the punch required is specialized and a little harder (and pricier) to get than a standard hole punch, but if you do have a punch, this is also pretty easy.

If you’re starting with a commercial planner and adding your own pages, make note of the fact that some of these are weird sizes, so your custom pages might need trimming before you punch them to add to the planner.

Because of the design of the discs, the pages can rotate around them 360°, so the planner can be folded over completely flat.

However, that brings me to the biggest downside I found to this style, apart from being a little more expensive and harder to find parts for — the pages don’t slide around the discs very easily if the paper is too thin. With a commercial planner, this shouldn’t be an issue because the designer will have already taken it into consideration. But if you’re making your own — or if you’re adding pages — be sure you print on thick enough paper.

If it’s too thin, the paper flexes too much, so it doesn’t want to slide around all of the rings evenly and simultaneously, so things get stuck, and it’s unwieldy and annoying. Standard printer paper is 20lb bond, and it’s really too thin to work well. The general consensus online seems to be that at least 28lb is necessary, and 32lb is best. You’ll want to ensure you have a nice thick, stiff cover, too. That really helps with the smoothness of page turns, too.

Disc-bound planners are in the medium range with regard to bulk. The discs do take up more space relative to the overall book thickness than something like a wirebound planner. However, because it’s only the rings that have added thickness, it isn’t as much bulk altogether as what you get with a ring binder.

If you’re new to this type of binding, you are probably also wondering if the different brands are interchangeable. The answer is mostly, yes. The hole shapes may vary subtly from one brand to another, so it’s possible the pages may not turn quite as smoothly if you’re mixing certain brands. But they’re pretty similar, so all the major brands should work together in terms of the holes and discs being compatible. (Obviously, you’ll need to check for yourself that the overall page size corresponds.)

The Happy Planner 9 Hole Paper Punch For Disc-Bound Planners Staples 324688 Arc System Desktop Punch 8 Sheet Capacity TUL Custom Note-Taking System Discbound Hole Punch, Silver Levenger Circa Universal Sturdy Desk Punch Paper Punches