Most communication happens over email now, so it’s fair to ask whether printed letterhead is worth bothering with in a business that runs largely online. For contracts, formal correspondence, invoices and anything that needs to feel official, it’s still worth doing properly, and when it’s done well, it works alongside your business cards and signage to make your brand feel consistent and considered, rather than thrown together at the last minute.
Letterhead still earns its place for formal communication
Day-to-day emails don’t need a letterhead, and nobody expects one for a quick reply or a scheduling note. But for contracts, proposals, official notices, invoices, tender documents and anything sent to a client, supplier or regulator, printed or PDF letterhead still signals a level of professionalism that a plain page can’t quite match. It’s a small detail, but it’s the kind of small detail that adds up alongside your business cards and any signage you use to make a brand feel established rather than improvised.
There’s also a practical side to this. A well-designed letterhead template, set up once and used consistently, saves time for everyone in the business who needs to send out formal correspondence, nobody has to reinvent the layout each time, and every document that leaves the business looks like it belongs to the same company. For businesses that deal with contracts, compliance documents or anything that might be referred back to later, that consistency also makes documents easier to recognise and trust at a glance.
Keep the design itself simple
Less is more here, and it’s an area where restraint pays off more than creativity. Your logo, business name and core contact details, phone, email, website and address, are the essentials, and it’s worth resisting the urge to add a fax number nobody uses, every social media handle you’ve ever created, or a long list of taglines and slogans. Keep your logo in a consistent position, whether that’s top-left or centred at the top of the page, and leave plenty of clear, uncluttered space for the actual letter content underneath.
A simple footer with your ABN, registered address or any legally required details (if applicable to your industry) can also live at the bottom of the page, out of the way of the main content but still there when someone needs to check it. The goal throughout is a letterhead that looks professional and complete on its own, while still leaving room for whatever gets typed onto it, a contract, a proposal, a formal letter, without feeling cramped or competing for attention with your branding.
Consistency is what makes a stationery suite work
The whole point of a stationery suite is that it reads as one thing, even though it’s made up of several separate printed items. Use the same logo placement, colours and fonts across your letterhead, envelopes and business cards, and try to keep the paper weight in the same general family across all three. An envelope printed on flimsy stock next to a solid letterhead sheet reads as mismatched the moment someone holds both together, and that small inconsistency can undercut an otherwise polished brand.
If you’re ordering all three at once, it’s worth having one designer set them up together rather than separately, so nothing drifts between pieces, the same blue on your business card should be the same blue on your letterhead and envelope, not a close approximation that looks slightly different under different lighting or paper stock. This is one of the areas where working with a single printer for your whole stationery suite pays off, since it’s much easier to match colours, paper and finishing across products when they’re all produced through the same process rather than pieced together from different suppliers over time.
Paper weight matters more than people expect
For letterhead, 100gsm to 120gsm gives a solid, professional feel without being stiff to fold, which matters if the letter is going to be posted in a standard envelope rather than handed over in person. Envelopes are typically a touch lighter for practicality and ease of folding, but should still sit comfortably in the same weight family as your letterhead so the set feels cohesive rather than assembled from a handful of unrelated print jobs.
If you’re not sure what a particular weight feels like in practice, ask for a physical sample pack before committing to a full order, weight and texture are genuinely hard to judge from a screen, and a paper that looks fine in a product photo can feel thin or flimsy the moment it’s in someone’s hands. It’s a small step that avoids reprinting an entire batch because the stock didn’t feel the way you expected once it arrived.
Envelopes deserve a bit of thought too
It’s easy to treat envelopes as an afterthought, but they’re often the very first part of your brand a recipient sees, well before they open the letter inside. A window envelope keeps things efficient for invoices and statements, since it avoids printing a separate address label or re-keying details. A fully branded envelope, with your logo printed directly on the front, tends to suit formal correspondence, proposals or anything where making a strong first impression matters before the envelope is even opened. If you’re setting up a mail-out and want to check sizing before you order, Australia Post’s size and weight guidelines are worth a quick look so your envelopes don’t get bumped into a different postage category. Either way, matching the envelope to the rest of your stationery, rather than grabbing a plain one from an office supply cupboard, closes the loop on a genuinely consistent brand experience from the moment mail arrives.
Letterhead works differently on screen than it does on paper
It’s worth remembering that a lot of “printed” correspondence today is actually sent as a PDF rather than physically posted, which means your letterhead needs to hold up on a screen as well as on paper. Fine details, subtle background tints or very light colours can look crisp on a printed sheet but wash out or pixelate slightly when viewed on a monitor or phone. If a large share of your formal documents go out digitally, it’s worth asking your designer to check the letterhead at screen resolution as well as in physical print, so it looks equally sharp whichever way it’s eventually seen. A letterhead built for both formats from the outset saves you from needing two separate versions down the track.
It also pays to think about how your letterhead template will actually be used day to day, not just how it looks as a finished design. If several people across your business will be typing onto it, filling in contracts, drafting letters, preparing proposals, the template needs to work smoothly in whatever software they’re using, with margins and spacing that leave enough room for a realistic amount of text. A beautifully designed letterhead that leaves barely five centimetres for the actual letter isn’t much use in practice, so it’s worth testing the template with a real, full-length document before finalising it.
You don’t need to order thousands to get started
Digital short-run printing means a small business can order a modest batch of letterhead and envelopes, see how quickly they actually get used, and reorder as needed rather than committing to a huge quantity up front. It also means you’re not stuck with outdated contact details, an old logo or a phone number that’s since changed sitting in a drawer as part of a five-year supply. For a growing business, that flexibility is often more valuable than the marginal cost savings of a much larger print run.
If you’ve already got business cards with us, we can match your letterhead and envelopes to the same colours, paper family and branding so everything feels like one cohesive set rather than three separate decisions made at different times. If you’re starting from scratch, our in-house graphic designers can build the whole suite together from the ground up, drawing on our broader stationery printing range so your business cards, letterhead and envelopes are consistent from day one.
Ready to put together a stationery suite that actually looks like one brand? Visit Printnova to see our stationery printing services, request a quote, or get in touch with our Newcastle and Lake Macquarie team today.
