Will A5 Journal Inserts Fit Your Planner? How to Check the Six-Ring Fit

The question I am asked most often is some version of this. My cover says A5, the pages say A5, so why will they not go on the rings.

It is a fair question and the answer is a little annoying. A5 describes the paper. It says nothing about where the holes sit, how far apart the rings are, or how much room is left inside a closed cover. Those three things decide whether a page actually works in your planner.

So before you order another set of inserts, here is the check I do. It takes about five minutes and a ruler.

The paper is the same. The binding is not.

A5 is a fixed 148 by 210 mm sheet (5.8 × 8.3 inches), half an A4, set by the ISO 216 paper standard. The phrase A5 planner, though, describes a product rather than a punch pattern.

A cover has to be a little larger than the pages it holds, so two covers both sold as A5 can have quite different room inside. And the holes along the page edge are decided by whoever made the pages.

Treat A5 as the starting point. It narrows things down. It does not finish the job.

Measure a page that already fits, not the outside of your cover.

A closed cover tells you almost nothing about which inserts will go into it. The paper is what has to match.

Six holes does not mean one pattern.

On most A5 six-ring planners the holes come as two groups of three. Within each group the holes sit about 19 mm apart, and that part is reasonably consistent across brands.

The gap between the two groups is where brands part ways. The organiser hole-spacing reference kept at hjreggel.net puts the common A5 layout at roughly 70 mm between groups, and lists A5 planners that use about 51 mm or about 80 mm instead. A page punched for one of those will not drop onto rings set for another, no matter what the label says.

1. Measure centre to centre between every pair of holes, working down the punched edge.
2. Write down every gap, including the larger one between the two groups.
3. Measure from the top edge of the page to the centre of the first hole.
4. Measure from the punched side edge in to the hole centres.

If you only have the cover, measure between the ring centres instead and compare those with the page you want to buy.

Paper size is not the whole of fit.

Dividers and tabs stick out past the page edge on purpose, and pen loops, card slots and a magnetic flap all take up space inside the cover. The pages can be exactly right and still not sit well.

Check three things. 

Tabs sit inside the closed cover. 

Pages turn the whole way around the rings without catching. 

The closure still shuts without being pressed.

Start with a thinner stack than you think you want, then add. A cover that closes easily gets opened. A cover stuffed to its limit gets left on the shelf.

Our A5 PU leather planner covers use a six-ring binder, so pages come in and out and change order whenever your routine does. Inside there are five card slots, two pockets and two pen loops. Those take up room, which is exactly why the stack check above matters.

Our pre-punched A5 planner pages are printed on 300gsm and punched ready to go on. Pre-punched means the holes are already made for you. It does not, on its own, mean a page suits every A5 binder on the market, so check the size and punching on the individual listing against the numbers you just wrote down.

I am not going to tell you our pages fit every A5 planner ever made, because I cannot know that. What I can tell you is that they are made for a six-ring A5 cover, and that the size and punching are on every page listing, so you can check them against the numbers you just wrote down.

Once the fit is settled you can stop thinking about millimetres and start thinking about what you actually need on the page. A little structure for the week. Somewhere to put the noise in your head. One habit you are quietly trying to keep.

If you are starting from nothing, the Mindful Journaling Starter Kit pairs a cover with a set of pages so the sizing is already handled. If you would rather choose every page yourself, the guide to creating your own journal walks through it.

Keep your page measurements and your ring spacing on that sticky note. Five minutes of checking now is the difference between a planner you use and a drawer of pages that never went on.

Sources

• Paper size: A5 is 148 by 210 mm under ISO 216, papersizes.io reference for the A series.
• Ring spacing: organiser hole-spacing reference at hjreggel.net, which lists 19 mm within each group of three and group gaps of roughly 70 mm, 51 mm and 80 mm across A5 planners.
• Community reference: Philofaxy, The Great Organiser Hole Spacing, on how spacing differs between planner formats.