It might seem a little silly to write a whole post about tabbed dividers.  I mean, you can go to Amazon or Staples or wherever and see what the options are, right?  Well, yes, but…sometimes it’s hard to get a “real world” feel for why you might choose one style of dividers over another, so I thought I’d take a few minutes and talk about a few of the options and when and where I would use — or have used — various ones.

(Most of these are Avery.  This isn’t a sponsored post.  Most of the divider tabs I use just are Avery.  They have a wide range of styles, and the quality is reliably good.)

Basic Tabbed Dividers

Basic tabbed dividers are usually made of heavy paper or cardstock, sometimes with reinforcement along the tabs and/or the hole-punched area. They are typically either white or manila, and may have flat tabs that you label by writing on them or adhering labels, or insertable tabs.

I personally prefer white over manila, as I find them more attractive (manila can have a sort of “aged” look, in my mind), but white may not stand out visually from the rest of the papers in your binder, so that’s something to consider. On the other hand, if they don’t have any plastic coating, white paper dividers lend themselves beautifully to decoration with the art medium of your choice!

The dividers in this category tend to be pretty boring, and often not as sturdy or long-lasting as the other dividers you’ll see throughout this post. However, they usually have the advantage of price. You can buy 1/5-cut (5 tabs fit along the length of a page) or 1/8-cut tabs (8 tabs fit along the length of a page) very inexpensively, and even in bulk.

Basic dividers like this are rarely wide enough for the tab to extend beyond page protectors, if you’re using those.

Double-Insertable Dividers

What I’m calling “double insertable” dividers, Avery officially calls “Protect ‘n Tab” dividers. The reason I call them “double insertable” is that they have two spaces for inserting your own materials — the tabs, of course, and also the main part of the page. In other words, this is basically a sheet protector (which holds a standard-size sheeet of paper) with a tab attached (so you can insert your own label).

As dividers go, these are a little boring, too — almost as boring as plain old basic tabs. But these are what I use when I have my own printed divider pages I want to use. For instance, these are what I use with my Homemaking Binder and Prayer Binder dividers.

Given the design of these, it’s probably clear without my even pointing it out that these are also wide enough that the tabs extend beyond page protectors.

Plastic with Pockets

There are several different variations on these plastic dividers with pockets, and they all have the same set of distinctive advantages.  The plastic makes them more spill-resistant than paper dividers.  And the pockets, obviously, are useful for holding things.

I especially love these for kitchen binders/recipe notebooks, because splatters can be readily wiped off, and the pockets give you a place to tuck recipes waiting to be tried, new ones that you haven’t gotten around to putting completely away yet, etc.  This is also what I used for my schoolwork, and in my homeschool planning binder (primarily because of the pockets).

The style on the right here (with the brighter, bolder colors) is the style I usually use.  It really boils down to a) which groups of colors you prefer, and b) how you prefer to label your tabs.  The Write & Erase style doesn’t have “sleeves” for the tabs; they’re just tabs, and you write directly on them.  The other is a more traditional tab style.

Both styles are wide enough to use with sheet protectors, and be sure to take a closer look if you want certain colors, because they come in more colors that just what I’m showing here.  The Write & Erase even come in plain white, if you prefer a “clean” look — and they come in the Mini size, as well.

Decorative but See-Through

Now this is a style I’ve never used. These UltraLast dividers are made from a single sheet each of heavy plastic, with fashion designs around the edges — but transparent middles. So the divider forms a “frame” for whatever the first paper is that’s behind it in the notebook.

There are probably a lot of projects these just wouldn’t be a good fit for, but they could be a lot of fun when they are well-suited to the need. In order to label these tabs, you print the text on an adhesive label and stick it to the tab of the divider.

Besides fashionable prints (which are a lot of fun), these also come in solids.

It seems that this particular style would work best with binder content that doesn’t have a lot of color of its own, unless your color scheme happens to coordinate exactly!

It doesn’t look like these would be of a style that’s wide enough to accommodate page protectors, but reviewers say they are.

Alphabetical, etc.

Avery A-Z Tab Binder DividersAvery 12-Tab Binder DividersAvery 31-Tab Binder Dividers

These aren’t very exciting — or useful for every project — but can come in very handy when they’re right for the project at hand.

A-Z tab dividers are perfect for things like address books.  I also use them for organizing my genealogy paperwork.

Divider sets numbered 1-12 are, of course, well-suited to contexts where you’re breaking things down by months — like a household budget notebook, or expense records.  (You actually can get them with the month abbreviations on them instead, if you prefer.)  These would also work nicely in a tickler file.

Sets numbered 1-31 similarly work well for dated items, like a tickler file.

In my experience, these aren’t really wide enough to work nicely with page protectors, but the convenience of having exactly the sets you need can still be worth that trade-off.

Purely Decorative

There’s nothing functionally special about any of these dividers; what sets them apart is that they’re decorative — beautiful and/or fun.  The ones I’m showing here are just a selection.  These can be especially nice for a household notebook (home management binder) or a personal planner.  (Yes, that is a color-your-own option!)

Mini

Maybe you don’t need or want a full-size binder.  Certain applications — like, perhaps, a personal planner — may call for something smaller.  In that case you can get dividers to fit 5.5×8.5-inch ring binders.  (These will probably also work in a lot of half-size planner binders from “real” planner companies, but in some cases you might need to punch extra holes in them.  It looks as though Avery has already accounted for that, and their 5.5×8.5-inch accessories do have the extra holes already.)

You can get these in several styles, including options with tabs you write on, and insertable tabs.

Since we’re on the subject, and since this is not as common a product category, let me just draw your attention to some of the other supplies you can find for this size:

“Bookmarks”

Now these bookmark tabs are a bit different than the tabbed dividers we’ve been talking about so far.  These are not designed to be used (necessarily) as a set, but as moveable tabbed bookmarks to indicate a particular spot in your binder that you want it to be easy to flip to.  A couple obvious examples would be the page for the current day in your day planner or the current month in your budget planner.  (These come in Mini, too.)

Adhesive Tabs

The final important category is adhesive tabs.  Sometimes you can’t find just the right divider set for what you want.  Or you have your own pages that you really want to attach the tabs to.  In those instances, you can get tabs to stick on.  They come in both write-on and insertable options.

If you go with the insertible, you can get either clear or multicolored.  (I’ve used the clear adhesive ones a lot, myself.  These also come in a couple different widths, so make sure you’re getting the one you want.)  If you go with the write-on, they come in an array of colors and prints, and even metallics.  Note that most of these are repositionable/intended to be temporary (like sticky note flags), so if you’re using these and you want them to be more permanent, you might want to add a little extra adhesive of your own.

Do you have a favorite divider style, or something that’s just a perfect fit for a particular type of project?  Leave a comment and let the rest of us know which of  the tabbed divider options are your favorites!