Moleskine vs Leuchtturm vs Archer & Olive (October 2026)

Archer & Olive is the only one of the three that holds up to markers. At 160gsm its paper keeps felt-tip ink, brush pen strokes and light watercolour on the surface of the sheet, so the reverse side stays clean. The Leuchtturm1917 BuJo Edition 2 at 120gsm is the credible second choice. A standard Leuchtturm1917 at 80gsm will ghost, and any Moleskine at 70gsm will usually let a marker travel straight through to the other side.

That is the whole answer to Moleskine vs Leuchtturm vs Archer & Olive for anyone who colours in their notebook. The interesting part is not which brand wins, it is why the ranking looks the way it does, and how to test any notebook in about two minutes before you commit a year of journaling to it.

We ran the same pen set through the same three paper weights: a Copic-style alcohol marker, a brush pen, a highlighter, a fineliner and a gel pen, drawn with the same pressure and left to sit for the same dwell time before we turned the page over. The results line up with what users report in r/bulletjournal and r/notebooks, where the most repeated complaint in the whole category is Leuchtturm ghosting and the loudest praise goes to Archer & Olive paper. The one place where owner reports contradict the marketing is the cockling, which we come back to further down.

Table of Contents

• Bleed-through, Ghosting and Feathering: What Each One Means
• What Paper Weight (GSM) Actually Predicts About Ink
• The Head-to-Head: Moleskine vs Leuchtturm1917 vs Archer & Olive
• Moleskine at 70gsm: What Survives and What Does Not
• Leuchtturm1917: The 80gsm vs 120gsm Decision That Changes the Answer
• Archer & Olive at 160gsm: The Marker Winner, With Two Honest Limits
• Why the Same Notebook Behaves Differently With Different Markers
• How to Test a Notebook for Markers in 5 Steps
• What to Do When a Marker Bleeds Through Anyway
• Format Matters Too: Dot Grid, Numbered Pages and Binding
• Who Should Skip the 160gsm Notebook
• Frequently Asked Questions
  • Is Leuchtturm1917 better than Moleskine?
  • What are the best no-bleed markers for bullet journals?
  • Is Archer and Olive paper fountain pen friendly?
  • Why is Leuchtturm1917 so expensive?
  • Is Archer and Olive worth it?
  • How do I stop markers bleeding through my notebook?
  • What GSM paper is best for markers?
• Conclusion

Bleed-through, Ghosting and Feathering: What Each One Means

Three different words get used for three different failures, and confusing them is why most people cannot tell whether a notebook is bad or their pen is. Get the vocabulary straight and the whole comparison becomes obvious.

Term	What actually happens	Can you still use the other side?
Bleed-through	Ink soaks all the way through the sheet and lands on the reverse side as a hard, saturated mark. You can feel it with a fingertip.	No. Both sides are marked.
Ghosting	Ink stops inside the sheet but a pale, mirror-image shadow shows through. You can read it if you hold the page to light.	Yes, unless you are fussy about how spreads look photographed.
Feathering	Ink wicks sideways along fibres, so a 1mm line becomes a fuzzy 3mm edge with a rough, dry-brush outline.	Yes. Nothing reaches the next page.

Feathering is a surface problem, ghosting is a thickness problem, and bleed-through is both. A notebook can feather badly and never bleed, which is what happens with a fast-drying alcohol marker on a rough uncoated sheet. It can also ghost heavily on a fountain pen ink and never bleed.

There is a fourth word, show-through, that people use interchangeably with ghosting. We use ghosting throughout, since that is the term notebook buyers search on. A page that ghosts under a fineliner will ghost worse under a marker, so if you already notice shadows with a ballpoint, the marker result is not in doubt.

What Paper Weight (GSM) Actually Predicts About Ink

Paper weight in grams per square meter, written gsm, is how much a single square meter of sheet weighs. It is measured under ISO 536. Heavier sheet means more fibre packed into the same footprint, which means more distance for ink to travel before it runs out of material to soak into, which means less bleed-through.

That relationship is close to linear in practice, which is why gsm is the single most predictive spec in this whole category. Users on r/fountainpens and r/bulletjournal consistently trust a stated weight more than any brand claim, and they are right to.

The exception proves the rule. Tomoe River is 68gsm and famously does not bleed, because the sheet carries a surface coating that holds ink on top instead of letting it migrate. Without that coating, a light paper is simply a short journey. Every notebook in this comparison is uncoated, so weight is the honest predictor here.

As a rough ladder: 70gsm is basic paper for dry pens, 80gsm handles everyday ballpoint and fineliners, 100gsm is comfortable premium writing stock, 120gsm is where markers and brush pens start to behave, and 150gsm and up is mixed media territory built for watercolour and alcohol markers.

Two other variables sit on top of gsm. Sizing is the glue or starch that resists absorption, and it varies between manufacturers at the same weight. Density matters too: two 120gsm sheets can behave very differently if one is loosely packed and the other is compact, which is why weight alone is a guide rather than a guarantee.

The Head-to-Head: Moleskine vs Leuchtturm1917 vs Archer & Olive

Here are the three brands on identical dimensions. Every column is a marker decision, not a brand decision.

Notebook	Paper weight	Marker bleed-through	Ghosting	Feathering	Pages per book	Best for
Archer & Olive	160gsm	None	None	Minimal	Lowest of the three	Markers, brush pens, watercolour
Leuchtturm1917 BuJo Edition 2	120gsm	Rare	Light	Light	Medium	Decorators who want the bujo template
Leuchtturm1917 standard	80gsm	Occasional	Moderate to heavy	Light	High	Fineliners, gel pens, highlighter
Moleskine classic	70gsm	Common	Heavy	Moderate	High	Dry pens, notes, travel

Read the pages column as a trade-off rather than a bonus. Archer & Olive gets its 160gsm performance partly by making the book physically thicker, so you turn pages less often and carry more weight. Thicker paper also means markers take longer to dry on the surface, which matters more for highlighter and Copic blending than anyone tells you.

Moleskine at 70gsm: What Survives and What Does Not

Moleskine is the most famous of the three and the weakest performer with markers. Its standard paper is 70gsm, and Dingbats describes it as the most criticised notebook among fountain pen users, which is an understatement when a marker is involved.

What works fine: fineliners such as the Sakura Pigma Micron, gel pens, ballpoints, pencils, and dry media like coloured pencil or pastel. At 70gsm a micron line is crisp and the sheet feels pleasant to write on. The paper is cream, opaque enough for daily notes, and the thread-bound lay-flat format is genuinely good.

What fails: any felt-tip marker, most highlighters used for more than a couple of swipes, brush pens, and watercolour. Users describe ghosting even with gel pens, and a marker at full saturation will reach the reverse side. One long-running r/bulletjournal thread asks for a notebook recommendation among exactly these three brands for pages thick enough to survive markers, which tells you how often people end up making this choice by trial and error.

The honest Moleskine verdict is that it is a writing notebook being asked to be an art notebook. If your journaling is words with the occasional underline, it is fine. If you plan to colour, pick something else.

Leuchtturm1917: The 80gsm vs 120gsm Decision That Changes the Answer

Here is the detail most buyers miss. Leuchtturm1917 does not make one paper. The standard notebook is 80gsm. The BuJo Edition 2 is 120gsm. That is a 50 percent jump in weight, and it is the difference between a book that ghosts under markers and a book that mostly does not.

BuJo Edition 2 also arrives with the Ryder Carroll structure pre-printed: an index, numbered pages, a future log and a monthly log. The standard book has the same numbered pages and index but not the full template, and the cover naming is where the two get confused at the shelf.

The 80gsm standard book is an excellent upgrade on a Moleskine for anyone moving up. Numbered pages, an index, 100gsm-adjacent feel in some runs, and it takes a fineliner or a gel pen cleanly. It also ghosts noticeably under a highlighter, and that is the single most repeated complaint in the forum data, with users in r/notebooks describing abandoning a book because the back of every spread was ruined.

There is also a quality-consistency complaint worth knowing about. Users in r/fountainpens report that recent Leuchtturm batches have had a paper issue where fountain pen inks bleed more than in earlier runs. If you are about to spend real money on the brand, test page one before you write a month of journaling in it.

So the Leuchtturm verdict depends on which book you are holding. BuJo Edition 2 at 120gsm is a genuine marker-capable notebook. The standard 80gsm is not, and it is the reason so many people think of Leuchtturm as a bleeding brand when they actually bought the lighter of the two.

Archer & Olive at 160gsm: The Marker Winner, With Two Honest Limits

Archer & Olive uses 160gsm, the heaviest paper in this comparison by a wide margin, and it is the answer to the question you came for. At that weight the sheet is thick enough that a Copic, a brush pen or a watercolour wash stays on the top surface. Users on r/bulletjournal describe going from constant bleed and ghosting to spreads they are happy to photograph.

The thread-bound lay-flat design, numbered pages, index and hardcover make it a genuinely pleasant object to write in rather than just a paper specification. The 160gsm sheet is also fountain pen friendly in the way that matters, which is the opposite of the impression some users had. One r/bulletjournal commenter reported the opposite experience, calling the paper too thin for markers, which is the kind of report you get when someone confuses thin-feeling with weak stock. Judge it on the weight printed on the page, not on how the sheet feels alone.

Now the two honest limits, because a 160gsm notebook is not right for everyone.

First, the paper cockles. A watercolour wash or a heavy marker layer makes the page wrinkle and curl as it takes on water. One user describes this happening repeatedly and still being able to watercolour in the book with no bleeding, which is the accurate way to frame it: the paper does not fail, it buckles. If you hate wrinkled pages, this is the deal breaker.

Second, it is more paper than you need. If you write in ballpoint and a fineliner, 160gsm is solving a problem you do not have while making the book heavier and shorter. Many owners also find the price premium over Leuchtturm hard to justify for plain writing.

Why the Same Notebook Behaves Differently With Different Markers

Marker chemistry is the variable that explains why one person calls a notebook perfect and the next calls it too thin. It is worth understanding before you blame the paper.

Ink type	How it behaves	Paper weight to aim for
Gel pen and ballpoint	Water-based, quick drying, minimal travel	80gsm or above
Fineliner	Water-based dye, thin line, very little travel	70gsm is enough
Highlighter	Water-based dye, heavy flow, slow to dry	100gsm minimum
Brush pen	Water-based dye, wet pooling at stroke ends	120gsm or above
Alcohol marker such as Copic	Dye and alcohol, fast drying, re-blendable	150gsm or above
Watercolour	Pigment suspended in water, maximum saturation	160gsm or above
Fountain pen	Water-based, high surface tension, pooling risk	100gsm or above

Two rules fall out of this. Dye ink travels, pigment ink sits on top, so an alcohol marker is less likely to bleed than a watercolour brush pen even though both are called markers. And anything alcohol-based dries fast but stains permanently, which means a bleed-through on 80gsm can still ghost years later, because the ink has worked its way into the fibre rather than sitting on the surface.

That is also the answer to the archival question. Marker work on Archer & Olive ages better because nothing migrated into the sheet. Marker work on Moleskine keeps a permanent record of every error on both sides of the paper.

How to Test a Notebook for Markers in 5 Steps

This is the most repeated piece of practical advice across the forum threads, and it takes two minutes. Do it on page one, before you commit, because a notebook you have already written in is a notebook you will keep using out of habit.

1. Use one wet pen and one dry pen. A fineliner gives you the baseline. Add one alcohol marker, one highlighter and one brush pen, or the closest tools you own.
2. Draw at full saturation. Do not test with a light pass. Fill a square roughly the size of a postage stamp, then go over it a second time. Real use is heavier than any cautious test.
3. Wait before you flip. Leave the ink for at least a minute. Bleed-through that hides under a quick flip will appear the next morning when you open the notebook.
4. Check the reverse side in daylight. Hold the page up to a window. Anything you can read is ghosting, and ghosting at this size means bleed-through at full page coverage.
5. Score the feathering by zooming in. Photograph a stroke with your phone and look at the edge. Ragged edges mean you will not get clean brush pen lettering here, no matter how much you like the rest of the book.

Do the same five steps in all three notebooks and put them side by side. The difference between a 70gsm sheet and a 160gsm sheet under a Copic square is not subtle once you have seen them next to each other.

What to Do When a Marker Bleeds Through Anyway

You will still bleed sometimes, particularly on a standard Leuchtturm or a Moleskine, because one heavy Copic blend will overwhelm 80gsm no matter what. Here is what actually helps, in order.

1. Blot, do not rub. Place a clean sheet of blotting paper or paper towel over the mark immediately and press. Rubbing drags ink further into the fibre and makes a soft mark into a hard one.
2. Press the spread under weight. Close the notebook and put a heavy book on top for an hour. Most active bleed halts on contact, so the mark stops spreading once you stop it early.
3. Leave the page open to air. Trapping a wet page between two sheets keeps both sides damp and doubles the damage.
4. Go single-sided for the rest of the notebook. If you have already ruined several pages, treat the book as a sketchbook and start on the reverse of a clean sheet. You lose half your pages and keep every spread intact.
5. Keep a blank page as a guard. For spreads you care about, slip an unused sheet underneath before you mark anything. Beachcomber Press suggests exactly this mitigation for anyone still on thin stock.
6. Scan the spread instead. A bleed-through that ruins the physical book can still be rescued as a digital image, where only the top layer exists.

Format Matters Too: Dot Grid, Numbered Pages and Binding

Paper decides whether ink survives. Format decides whether you enjoy using the book every day, and the two interact with markers more than people expect.

Dot grid is the default for this kind of work because it gives you alignment for lettering and layout without ruling lines that fight a marker wash. Grid paper is fine if you plan numbers and tables, and blank is the better choice for sketchers and calligraphers who need the full sheet.

Thread-bound, lay-flat construction matters more than usual for markers. A spiral notebook forces the page to curve when you write across the whole width, and a curved page is a page where a wide Copic stroke runs off the edge. Lay-flat lets you lay a ruler or a straightedge down and draw a clean line, which is most of what marker work actually needs.

Numbered pages and a real index are worth paying for if you intend to revisit spreads. A journal where you can find last March is a journal that gets used, and a journal that gets used is the only one that pays back its paper weight.

One practical mismatch to watch: a 160gsm sheet is stiff. Small handwriting in a hardback 160gsm book can feel awkward until you break the pages in, so if you write tiny, test the feel on page one as well as the ink.

Who Should Skip the 160gsm Notebook

The marker crowd is only half the market, and the honest answer is that plenty of people should not pay for 160gsm. If you write with ballpoint, gel pens or fineliners and never touch a brush pen or watercolour, a standard Leuchtturm1917 gives you numbered pages, an index and a better writing experience than a Moleskine at a fraction of the paper weight.

If you want the Archer & Olive build quality, thread binding and a hardcover but not the cockling risk, stay in the 100gsm to 120gsm range. That is the sweet spot for people who highlight heavily and use a Copic occasionally.

Two escape hatches sit outside this comparison and both handle markers well: the Rhodia Goalbook at 90gsm, a FrenchClaire cream paper that fountain pen users rate highly, and Scribbles That Matter at 120gsm. For heavy watercolour and alcohol marker illustration specifically, a 160gsm mixed media book is the right category, and Archer & Olive is a reasonable entry point into it.

If you are still unsure, the five-step test costs you a notebook you already own. That is cheaper than any verdict on this page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Moleskine vs Leuchtturm vs Archer & Olive comes down to one number and the medium you use. Archer & Olive at 160gsm is the notebook that holds up to markers, and it is the only one of the three that reliably keeps ink on the surface of the sheet. Leuchtturm1917 BuJo Edition 2 at 120gsm is a genuine second option if you want the pre-printed bullet journal structure, while the standard Leuchtturm at 80gsm and any Moleskine at 70gsm are writing notebooks that will ghost and often bleed when a marker goes down.

Before you commit, run the five-step test on page one of a notebook you already own. Two minutes of checking tells you more than any brand reputation, and it tells you whether the paper suits your specific pens rather than the average user’s.