I’m Wirecutter’s Resident Notebook Expert. Here’s My Favorite Journal.

Leuchtturm1917 notebooks come in a rainbow of hard and soft covers and can be purchased with blank, dotted, lined, or squared ruling. This variety makes it easy to designate notebooks for different purposes or even moods. (I’m eyeing the new sky color variant for travel writing, because I like to be near water.)

But while a love affair with a notebook starts with the cover, it endures because of the paper. The Leuchtturm1917 notebook’s thin paper (80 grams per square meter) is slightly translucent and has a unique powdery feel and a gorgeous cream tone that’s easy on the eyes. Some notebooks have rulings that are too dark and distracting, but this one uses an elegant light blue-gray.

For me, the best part of using a notebook is the tactile experience the paper provides. The Leuchtturm1917 notebook’s paper has a satisfying toothiness—encouraging the friction of a pen nib or pencil tip—that makes me more mindful of how and what I’m scribbling compared with when I use cheaper paper. It also makes everything I write on it feel more special, even if I’m just jotting down fleeting ideas or a record of inscrutable dreams.

Each page is numbered, and index pages are in the front of the notebook, so you can track where in the book you write about different topics. I like looking at my curated table of contents almost as much as I like flipping through notebooks, because it serves as a kind of highlights reel.

Two ribbons let you divide the notebook into sections. These aren’t the scrawny, flimsy ribbon bookmarks you find in cheaper notebooks; they’re satiny, with a woven texture, and they extend nearly 3 inches past the bottom of the book. I use the ribbons in my poetry course notebook to separate notes from odes and sonnets, but the possibilities are almost endless.

At the back of the notebook is a pocket—pretty standard for journals these days, and useful for stashing stuff like stickers and receipts. That’s where you’ll find the Leuchtturm1917 notebook’s lovely spine and cover labels. As someone who goes through a lot of notebooks and constantly craves organization, the labels are a godsend.

I’ll be the first to admit that the best notebook is the one that’s best for you (and different notebooks may serve different purposes). The Leuchtturm1917 notebook is a match for me in every way, but you might not like it for a few valid reasons.

First, the line ruling is narrower than most notebooks—6 mm versus 7 mm. I have small handwriting, and writing in our pick from Leuchtturm1917 makes it look big, which I like.

Second, because of the paper’s thinness, you’ll see some ghosting. But to me, that’s a feature, not a bug: Having some of the writing show through to the opposite side of the page is part of the notebook’s romantic appeal.

Finally, while I like using the notebook with all sorts of writing utensils, including my fountain pen, you might encounter some bleeding if you write with lots of pressure or very slowly. This is not a notebook to watercolor in, although the company now makes notebooks with thicker paper (120 gsm) that’s less transparent and should hold up better to wetter inks.

P.S. Leuchtturm means “lighthouse” in German and is pronounced “loy-stum,” according to a customer representative I spoke with. I haven’t been saying “Leck-term” in my head this whole time, I swear.

This article was edited by Ben Keough and Erica Ogg.