Weekly planner layouts explained

There are about six shapes a week can take on paper, and the differences between them are not aesthetic. They are arithmetic. Once you know how much writing room each one produces, the choice makes itself.

The measurement that decides everything

Comfortable adult handwriting needs about 7 mm of line height. College-ruled paper is 7.1 mm, narrow-ruled is 6.35 mm, and the planner community consistently rejects anything below 6 mm as unusable. Handwritten characters are 3 to 6 mm wide, so about 5 mm each is a fair budget.

Everything below follows from those two numbers.

Vertical: days as columns

Seven columns across the page, usually three boxes per day for morning, afternoon and evening.

The whole product is the usable width divided by seven. On portrait Letter that is 25.2 mm per day, which is roughly five handwritten characters. On portrait A4 it is 24.4 mm, which is worse. Neither is a planner.

Landscape Letter gives 36.3 mm per column, within reach of the 38.1 mm that Erin Condren and the Happy Planner Classic both use as their standard. That is why a vertical weekly is nearly always landscape or a two-page spread, and why we do not offer a portrait version at any size.

Use it if you think in blocks of the day and your entries are short. It is excellent for seeing shape: a glance tells you which evenings are already committed.

Horizontal: days as rows

Each day gets a full-width row. On portrait Letter that is 165 mm of clear writing width, which holds an entire thought rather than an abbreviation.

The trade is vertical room. Seven rows on portrait Letter is 36.3 mm per day, which after a 7 mm day header gives four writing lines. Combining Saturday and Sunday into one row buys 42.3 mm and a fifth line.

Use it if your entries are sentences. If you write “Call the surveyor about the boundary” rather than “Call surveyor”, the horizontal row is the only layout that fits it without abbreviating.

Hourly: seven columns against a time rail

The same seven columns as a vertical weekly, but with an hour rail down the left and horizontal rules at every half hour.

Portrait is right for this one, because hours need vertical run. On Letter portrait at 8 mm per half-hour row you fit 14 hours; at 7 mm you fit 16. Landscape gives you only ten, because the extra width comes out of the height.

The hour rail costs about 21 mm of width, which is real on a small sheet. That is why a seven-day hourly grid does not work on A5 portrait: it leaves 16 mm per day.

Use it if your week is appointments rather than tasks. An hour grid gives the day a physical size, which a list cannot do. Most people who chronically overcommit are surprised by what a filled hour grid looks like.

Two page: the week across a spread

The only layout that reaches six or seven writing lines a day, and the reason is arithmetic rather than marketing.

Six to seven lines a day needs roughly 48 mm per day. Across seven days that is 336 mm of vertical run, which is taller than any sheet we offer, including A4 at 297 mm. A spread is not a premium version of a single page; it is the only geometry that gets there.

It is also the traditional ring-binder format. Week on two pages, usually shortened to WO2P, is standard vocabulary in the personal-organiser world and the default for A5 and Personal inserts.

Use it if you write a lot, or you use a binder.

One page: week at a glance

Seven day boxes and a notes panel in a grid on a single sheet, sized so nothing needs abbreviating.

Seven days in a rectangular grid always leaves one cell over, and what you do with it separates a considered layout from an accident. Ours is a notes panel, placed last so the days read in order.

Use it if the planner lives on a wall or a fridge, or several people need to read it. It is the wrong layout if you write a lot per day, because eight cells on one sheet means each is about a quarter the size of a horizontal row.

Time blocking: the hourly grid with a capture column

Geometrically close to the hourly grid, with one addition that changes what it does: a full-height column beside the grid, with no time structure.

Time blocking means giving every hour a job in advance rather than working from a list. The part people skip is estimating how long each thing takes, and it is the part that makes the method work: a list of twelve tasks looks achievable until you write hours next to them and discover it is nineteen hours of work in a nine-hour day.

The capture column is where the tasks live before they are placed, and where anything arriving mid-week goes. A blank hour grid sold as a time-blocking template is missing the half that does the work.

Dot grid: draw your own

A 5 mm dot grid with the lightest possible day structure. The pitch matches Leuchtturm1917, Rhodia and Moleskine exactly, so proportions you have practised in a notebook transfer directly.

One thing worth knowing: 5 mm is below the handwriting minimum, which is why bullet journal text normally spans two dot rows. The grid is a guide, not a ruling.

Use it if you want to design the week yourself, or you are practising a spread before committing it to a bound notebook.

Choosing in one line each

• Short entries, want to see the shape of the week: vertical, landscape.
• Longer entries, sentences rather than fragments: horizontal.
• A week made of appointments: hourly.
• You need six or seven lines a day: two page.
• Goes on a wall for several people: one page.
• You want to plan the hours rather than list the tasks: time blocking.
• You want to draw it yourself: dot grid.