Free design proof on every custom order: no templates, no stock SKUs
Folded greeting cards open on a clean center crease, giving you a full interior panel for a handwritten note or a printed message alongside the front design. The classic format for birthdays, holidays, thank-yous and sympathy cards. Sturdy enough to stand up on a shelf or mantel once opened. Choose your cardstock weight and finish, front-only or full four-panel printing, and we'll include matching envelopes.
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A folded greeting card is the format most people picture when they think "greeting card". A single sheet scored down the middle and folded once, opening left to right like a small book. That fold does two things at once: it turns a flat sheet into a self-contained card that stands up slightly on its own, and it creates an interior panel separate from the cover, giving room for a printed message, a blank space for a handwritten note, or both. The classic four-panel layout (front, inside-left, inside-right, and back) is what makes this the default format for birthdays, holidays, thank-you notes, sympathy cards and any occasion built around a personal message.
Cardstock weight is worth getting right since it affects how the card feels and how well it holds its fold. A 14 pt to 16 pt stock is a common range. Sturdy enough to stand upright when propped open on a shelf or mantel, without being so stiff that the fold resists closing flat. Heavier stock in the 18 pt to 24 pt range gives a more substantial, premium feel, often chosen for corporate holiday cards or higher-end occasions where the card itself is meant to make an impression before it's even opened. Scoring before folding is what keeps the crease clean rather than cracked, particularly on darker inks or coated stock where a rough fold shows as a visible white line along the spine.
Printing can be as simple as a full-color front with a blank interior for handwriting, or as involved as a fully printed four-panel design with artwork, a printed greeting, and space reserved for a signature. Coated stock in a gloss or matte laminate adds durability and a polished look to the front cover, while an uncoated interior is worth keeping if the card is meant to be written in. Coated stock can resist pen ink or cause it to smear before it dries. Matching envelopes are typically ordered alongside the cards themselves, sized to the folded dimensions with enough clearance that the card slides in and out without catching.
Ordering considerations mostly come down to volume and use case. A single design ordered in bulk works well for a company-wide holiday mailing or a fundraiser thank-you campaign, where consistency matters more than variety. A smaller run with several different designs suits a retailer or boutique stocking a card display, where variety drives repeat browsing. Either way, it's worth deciding upfront how much of the interior will carry printed content versus blank space, since that affects both the layout and how personal each card will feel once it reaches the recipient.
A greeting card is handled deliberately, stood on a shelf and often kept, so it needs enough stiffness to stand unaided. Below about 250gsm a folded card slumps rather than standing. From 300gsm upward it holds its own weight cleanly. Uncoated and textured stocks are common here because a card is frequently written in, and a coated surface rejects pen.
Will my card stand up on a shelf? From 300gsm folded, yes. Lighter than that and it leans, which is the most common complaint about cheap cards.
Full color outside is standard. The inside is the decision worth making deliberately: printed with a message, printed with a light pattern, or left completely blank so the sender writes their own. Leaving it blank is not a saving so much as a choice about who the card is for. A blank interior is what makes a card usable for any occasion.
Should the inside be printed? Print it if the card carries a fixed message. Leave it blank if the sender writes, and make sure the stock takes pen.
Coating changes both the look and whether the card can be written in. Gloss lifts photographic artwork but rejects pen entirely, which makes it wrong for a card meant to be signed. Matte and uncoated take ink cleanly. Foil, emboss and spot UV are all common on the outside, where they do more work per pound than extra color does.
Can I write in a gloss card? Not reliably. Ink beads and smears. If it gets signed, the inside must be matte or uncoated even if the outside is gloss.
Folded cards are scored before folding so the stock bends along a controlled line rather than cracking its coating at the spine. The envelope is ordered alongside rather than afterwards, because matching a card to an envelope later is difficult and a card that does not fit its envelope arrives creased. Undoing everything the stock choice was for.
Do envelopes come with the cards? Order them together. Matching size, color and stock afterwards is far harder than it sounds.
A clean center crease giving a front, a full interior spread and a back. The interior is the whole reason to choose this format. It is a generous, uninterrupted surface for a handwritten note, which is what most people actually want a greeting card for. It also stands unaided on a shelf, which a flat card does not.
Why does my folded card crack at the spine? A missed score. Coated stock at card weight has to be scored before folding, or the coating fractures the length of the fold.
Ask for samples before a run. Whether a card stands on a shelf and whether it takes pen are both decided here, and neither shows on screen.
Metallic foil pressed into the card. On a greeting card it works hardest on a single element (a word, a shape, a border) against an uncoated ground, where the contrast between matte stock and bright metal does the work.
The card pressed into relief. Blind embossing with no ink at all is the quietest premium finish available and suits formal and sympathy cards, where restraint is the point.
A raised gloss varnish on selected areas of an otherwise matte card. It is visible only as it catches light, which makes it more interesting in the hand than a printed effect can be.
Fold lines scored so the spine does not crack, and shaped outlines cut where the card is not a rectangle. Both are mechanical operations done after printing and before packing.
Same family, genuinely different jobs. Your current selection is highlighted.
| Card | From | Format | Order it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Folded Greeting Cards | $170 | Center score, full interior | Someone writes a note inside |
| Standard Greeting Cards | $160 | Flat, printed both sides | Announcements and thank-you cards |
| Die-cut Greeting Cards | $180 | Cut to a silhouette | The shape is part of the message |
| Custom Greeting Cards | $190 | Square, panoramic or gatefold | No standard format fits the idea |
A missed or misplaced score. Coated card at greeting-card weights has to be scored before folding so the fibers bend along a controlled line. Without it the coating fractures white along the entire spine on the very first fold.
Print it if the card carries a fixed message. Leave it blank if the sender writes their own, which is what makes a card usable across occasions. Either way, make sure the interior stock takes pen.
From 300gsm, yes, cleanly. Below that a folded card leans or slumps, which is the single most common complaint about inexpensive cards and is entirely a stock decision.
Order them together. Matching size, color and stock afterwards is much harder than it sounds, and a card that does not quite fit its envelope arrives creased.
Pricing for folded greeting cards starts at $170 and moves with quantity, size, material and finish rather than sitting on a fixed list. Setup is shared across the run, so the per-unit price drops steeply as the quantity rises: the gap between a few hundred and a few thousand is usually the significant one. Send the size, quantity and what it has to do and you get a firm figure back, not a range.
There is a practical minimum rather than a hard one. Every run carries artwork checks, a proof and a press setup, so a very small quantity of folded greeting cards prices poorly per unit even though we will still make it. If you are ordering a small batch, ask for pricing at two or three quantities at once: the curve usually shows that a modest increase costs very little more in total.
The clock starts when you approve the proof, not when the order is placed, which is the part most people are surprised by. You get a proof first: a digital proof showing the outside, the interior and the fold line, with foil, emboss and spot UV marked as separate layers so you can see exactly what is being treated rather than inferring it. Turnaround after approval depends on the finish: anything laminated, foiled or die-cut adds a stage that cannot be compressed without causing problems later. Tell us the date you actually need them and we will work backwards from it rather than quoting a generic lead time.
Print-ready artwork with bleed and a safe margin, supplied as a PDF, AI or EPS. Photographic elements should be supplied at the resolution the finished size needs, not the resolution that looks sharp on screen. If your file is not print-ready, say so when you order. We would rather fix it before the proof than after the run.
Yes. Center score, full interior is the standard build, and the dimensions around it are yours to set. A size that sits efficiently on the press sheet often costs no more than a standard one, while an awkward proportion that wastes half the sheet does. Ask before you commit and we will tell you whether a small change to the dimensions saves a disproportionate amount.
In most cases they are the same product under a different name: the trade uses several terms for it depending on the region and the supplier. What actually defines this one is the build: center score, full interior. Order it when someone writes a note inside. If you have seen it called folded greeting cards printing elsewhere, describe what it has to do rather than which name you found, and we will match the specification.
Yes. We provide free samples, and on folded greeting cards it is worth asking for one, because the difference between smooth card and smooth card is obvious in the hand and invisible on a screen. Most orders run on smooth card, but ask for whichever you are weighing up. You also get a free design proof before anything goes to press, so nothing is printed that you have not seen.
The usual choices are foil stamping, emboss and deboss, spot uv. Finish is not decoration on this product so much as a decision about how long it survives and how it reads in the hand, so it is worth choosing against the job rather than the budget. Tell us where the finished piece ends up and we will say which finish is doing real work and which is only adding cost.
Yes, and that is what almost every order here is. Nothing in this catalogue is a stock item: folded greeting cards are manufactured to the specification you give us, with your artwork on them. Send your logo as vector artwork where you have it, since that scales to any size without softening. If all you have is a low-resolution file, tell us and we will say what it needs before it reaches the press.
Yes, and a repeat run is simpler than the first one. We keep your approved specification on file, so a reorder skips the setup decisions and goes straight to production. If nothing about the artwork or the specification has changed, there is nothing to re-approve. Tell us the previous order and we will match it rather than starting the specification again.
Yes. Regalo Print has been producing custom commercial print for businesses across the USA and Canada since 2008, and every order ships tracked. The tracking number reaches you the day the job leaves, not the day it arrives. If you are working to a fixed date, say so when you order so the production schedule is built around the delivery date rather than the other way round.
