How to Choose Your 2027 Planner

The layout that transforms one person's year is the same layout that sits untouched on someone else's desk by February. Neither of you did anything wrong. The fit was just off.

This guide is here to help you find yours. It covers all four 2027 layouts (vertical, horizontal, daily, and combined), the sizes we print them in, and the honest trade-offs of each, including the parts we'd rather you knew before you buy. We'd genuinely rather you get the right book once than the wrong book twice.

The Difference between Hemlock & Oak Planners

SIGNATURE PLANNERS 

A signature planner contains journaling and overviews and reviews that pair perfectly with therapy. They begin by exploring your personal values in order to help you set realistic goals and habits. Each month helps you review them and establish boundaries. It's self-care packaged with functional, useful layouts. 

MINIMALIST PLANNERS 

Minimalist planners omit journaling, and focus purely on layout and functionality. They also follow standard ISO sizing such as A5, B5, B6, and A6. 

Understanding Hemlock & Oak Paper

The paper that we select and create is always FSC-certified and sustainable. We do not use coatings on our papers in order to ensure they are recyclable for end-of-life use.

HERITAGE 120gsm

Heritage 120gsm is our original paper. It is thicker, bleed-resistant, with very minimal show-through. It is excellent for tombow markers, mildliners, most beloved pens (uniball, zebra, muji, etc), and is even appreciated by fine fountain pen users. Some may use distress oxide stamps as well. Note that those who enjoy the paper with their fountain pens are not using Tomoe River as a comparison point, and do not expect fountain pen ink properties (sheen, shade, hue) to pick up on the paper. Heritage 120gsm is thick and more porous; it dries quickly. Therefore, fountain pen inks will soak into the paper. 

HERITAGE 150gsm

Heritage 150gsm is currently only available in our notebooks, and is an even thicker sibling of the version above. This is even more opaque and handles a variety of media very well. 

Archivist 70gsm is our take on a fountain-pen friendly paper that works well with wet and medium-wet inks. It has decent hydrophobic properties, is slower to dry, and will allow the sheen and shading in your fountain pens to come through. It was personally tested by us while we made it with our partners on-site, and we are very happy with this initial formula. 

ARCHIVIST 120gsm

Similar to the paper above, but in a thicker format. We are running this paper in our A5 Minimalist Weekly & Daily Duo this year and look forward to learning how the audience appreciates it. We find that it takes fountain pens well, but also allows tombow markers and heavier media to shine without ghosting.

Find your format in 60 seconds

Find the statement below that sounds most like you, and start there.

• "My day is a series of appointments and I need to see where the gaps are." You want a vertical weekly. Time runs down the page in hourly rows, so an over-booked Tuesday actually looks over-booked.
• "My day is a list, not a schedule. Hourly grids make me feel behind." You want a horizontal weekly. Each day is an open row, and nothing is sitting there waiting to be filled in by 9am.
• "One week on two pages is never enough room." You want a daily. A full page for every day, with an hourly schedule on one side and an open checklist on the other.
• "I need the week to plan and the day to actually work." You want a combined. Weekly spreads and daily pages in the same book.
• "It has to live in my bag." Start with size, not layout. B6 and A6 travel. A5 is the middle ground. But a B5 stays on your desk.
• "I have abandoned every planner I have ever owned." Have a read through the section further down on abandoned planners before you pick anything.

Vertical weekly planners

A vertical weekly planner gives each day its own column, with hours running from top to bottom. Our 2027 vertical spreads run a 6am to 10pm schedule, with a left-hand margin for the week's focus, intentions, and to-dos, and open grid space underneath every day.

This layout does one thing better than any other: it makes time feel finite. When you write a two-hour meeting into a two-hour block, you can see what it costs you. And if you tend to plan a day that would really need thirty-six hours, you'll spot it in week one instead of month four.

Choose vertical if: You like time-blocking and seeing your day laid out in a column, or if your days have fixed points (shifts, classes, appointments, calls). Vertical is excellent if you want to protect blocks of focused time and for seeing your week at a glance.  

The honest trade-off: an hourly grid can feel like pressure to fill in a schedule. Many people work around this by turning their hourly column into a to-do list instead, or placing stickers over the hours. However, if your days are quite unstructured, a horizontal might be a better overall fit. 

Vertical options for 2027:

• Signature Vertical Weekly (6.35" x 8.5" page, 224 pages, $65). The one that started it all, with guided journaling at the front and monthly reviews and overviews. This is also available in a Sunday Start format. 
• A5 Minimalist Vertical Weekly (5.8" x 8.3", 224 pages, $65). Completely functional: no journaling, no reviews, just weekly layouts with calendars in between and 57 notes pages at the back. 
• B5 Minimalist Vertical Weekly (6.9" x 9.8", 224 pages, $75). The most writing room in the line.
• B6 Minimalist Vertical Weekly (4.9" x 6.9", 224 pages, $62). Our lightest weekly at only 337g, ultra portalble and slim.
  

Horizontal weekly planners

A horizontal weekly planner runs the seven days as rows down the left-hand page, with the whole right-hand page left open for to-dos, checklists, and notes. There's no hourly grid.

This is the layout for list-makers. It asks what needs to happen today and leaves the timing up to you. Because the right-hand page is unstructured, it soaks up whatever the week actually throws at you: a project brain-dump, a grocery list, notes from a phone call, a habit tracker you invented on Tuesday.

Choose horizontal if: you think in tasks more than timeslots, your schedule already lives in your phone, or a structured grid has made you feel behind before.

The honest trade-off: it's more difficult to view your daily schedule, and sometimes that means scheduling is less visible. People work around this by making their appointments obvious with stickers and/or highlighters. 

Our horizontal layout options for 2027:

• Signature Horizontal (6.35" x 8.5", 224 pages, Heritage 120gsm, $65) - with guided journaling at the front and monthly reviews and overviews.
• A5 Minimalist Horizontal (5.8" x 8.3", 224 pages, $65) - No journaling, just function.. 
• B5 Minimalist Horizontal (6.9" x 9.8", 224 pages, $75) - A larger size of the Minimalist Horizontal, perfect for people that plan at their desks.

Daily planners

A daily planner gives every single day of the year its own page. Each page has a focus box, an intentions box, a 5am to 11pm hourly schedule down the left, and an open checklist down the right, all on a subtle grid. The footer carries a mini-calendar of the week with the current day marked.

The reason to buy a daily is space. A full page per day is enough to schedule, journal, track, and think in the same place, which is why people who use their planner as a diary and a to-do list at once tend to land here.

We print the full-size daily on two papers. The Minimalist Daily runs 416 pages on thick Heritage 120gsm ($85). The Signature Daily runs 528 pages on fountain-pen-friendly Archivist 70gsm at the same A5+ size ($88), with 46 notes pages at the back and a wellness reminder on every day. Go for the Signature if you write with fountain pens or want the extra notes pages, and the Minimalist if you use markers and want the thicker sheet.

Choose daily if: you keep running out of room in a weekly spread, you journal alongside planning, or you find a whole week visible at once more overwhelming than helpful.

The honest trade-off: weight, and losing the weekly view. The Minimalist Daily weighs 1,008g (2.2 lbs), and the Signature Daily 908g despite carrying more pages, because 70gsm paper is lighter. Either way, it's a real object to carry around. You also can't see your week in one glance, which matters more than most people expect when they're planning ahead.

There are two ways around the weight. The Daily Duo splits the same 416 pages into two half-year books of 208 pages each, at 457g per book, so you're only ever carrying six months. Or go smaller: the B6 Daily (4.9" x 6.9", 400g, $78) and A6 Daily (4.1" x 5.8", 300g, $74) fit 416 pages into a carry-everywhere book by using our thinner Archivist 70gsm paper.

A word on the A6: it's genuinely small. A day of appointments plus journaling won't fit. Go for it if you want a page a day in your jacket pocket, and size up if you need a page a day because you write a lot.

Combined planners

A combined planner puts weekly spreads and full daily pages in the same book. You plan the week on the weekly spread, then work the day on the daily page. It's the most complete format we make, and the most expensive.

There's one real difference between our two combined books, and it's the thing to decide on.

The Weekly & Daily Vertical and Horizontal & Daily are organized by month. You get the month's overview, the month's calendar spread, then all of that month's weekly spreads together, then all of that month's daily pages together. If you like to sit down once a month and map out the whole month in one go, this flow will suit you. Both are 576 pages on Archivist 70gsm, 1,008g, $139 hardcover or $129 flex.

The A5 Weekly & Daily Duo is organized by week. Week one's weekly spread, then week one's seven daily pages, then a graph notes page, then week two's spread, and so on. Nothing is ever more than a few pages from the day you're in. It comes as two half-year books of 304 pages each (608 across the set) on Archivist 120gsm, $75 per book, at 560g each.

Choose combined if: you've tried keeping a weekly and a daily side by side and got tired of carrying two books.

The honest trade-off: cost and bulk. A single-volume combined is our heaviest book at over a kilogram, and at $139 it's more than twice the price of a weekly. If you're not sure you'll use the daily pages, buy a weekly first and find out.

Which size should you choose?

Size decides whether a planner actually travels with you, and a planner that stays home doesn't get used. Here's the practical read on each.

• A6 (4.1" x 5.8" page, 300g). Pocket and small-bag size. Least writing room. Daily only.
• B6 (4.9" x 6.9", 337g weekly / 400g daily). The lightest size that's still genuinely usable. Good if you carry a planner every day and write in short entries.
• A5 (5.8" x 8.3", 547g). If you're not sure, start here. Fits most bags and still has room to write.
• A5+ (6.35" x 8.5", 610g weekly). Our original house size, a little larger than standard A5. The weekly schedule column is 1.5" wide, which makes it the most legible hourly grid we make.
• B5 (6.9" x 9.8", 706g). A desk book. The most space per day of anything in the line, and the least portable.

What about paper and covers?

We print on three papers, and the choice mostly comes down to thickness against page count.

Heritage 120gsm (80lb) is thick, bright white, and highly bleed-resistant. It's FSC and SFI-certified, acid-free, and handles Tombows, Mildliners, gel pens, and fine fountain pens. It's what our weeklies and the Minimalist Daily are printed on.

Archivist 120gsm is new for 2027 and used only on the A5 Weekly & Daily Duo. It's fountain-pen-friendly like our 70gsm but at full thickness, in a slightly warmer white than Heritage.

Archivist 70gsm is thinner, developed with an FSC-certified European mill, and fountain-pen-friendly. Thinner paper is what lets our biggest books stay carryable. The trade-off is more show-through than 120gsm, so if you write with heavy ink and hate seeing the previous page, go for a Heritage 120gsm book.

Covers come in three constructions, all with the same layout and page count inside. Hardcover is the most protective and the only one with ribbon markers. Cloth Flex and Paper Flex are soft and bend with you, and they don't include ribbons because of how they're built.

If you have abandoned planners before

This one deserves its own section, because it's the most common thing people tell us.

Planners usually get abandoned for predictable, structural reasons, and most of them are fixable by choosing a bit differently next time:

• Too many journaling pages. Planners often come with journaling and reflection prompts, and for plenty of people those are the best part of the book: a way to ground yourself through the year. But some people find them overwhelming, and that's completely fine. If that's you, opt for a planner that prioritizes function. Our Minimalist line skips the guided journaling entirely and goes straight into the dated pages, with 57 notes pages at the back (34 in the B6) and 2 between each month for whatever you want to put there. It comes in A5, B5, and B6.
• It was too heavy, so it never actually came with you. Go a size down, or split a daily across two half-year books so you're only ever carrying six months at a time.
• You missed a week and couldn't face the gap. This is a common occurrence, and blank pages can feel like a failure (when they absolutely are not!). Many people end up memory logging instead, jotting down what actually happened, or journaling on the missed pages. If it really bothers you, an undated planner will give you more flexibility on when you start and stop, and take the pressure off.
• You bought the layout you thought you should use. This is the big one. If hourly grids have never once worked for you, a vertical planner isn't going to work this year either, and that isn't a personal failing. Horizontal exists for a reason.

Every 2027 layout is available as a free printable PDF. Print a month, use it for a couple of weeks with your real life in it, and you'll know. It costs you nothing and it's the single most reliable way to choose.

2027 planner comparison

Page sizes refer to the interior paper. Hardcovers measure slightly larger. Weights are for hardcover editions and are approximate. Links go to the hardcover edition of each format; cloth flex and paper flex options are on the same product pages.

How our planners are made

Every Hemlock & Oak planner is designed in British Columbia, and printed and bound in Ontario.

Our Heritage 120gsm paper is Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified through Preferred by Nature and SFI Certified Sourcing, and acid-free for archival quality. Our Archivist papers are made in partnership with an FSC-certified European mill. The mills we work with are largely powered by renewable energy, and they reuse their process water ten times before treating and returning 90% of it to watersheds.

We print with plant-based inks and recycled ink chemistry. Our covers use Lenzing Ecovero fibres, cotton and linen, or a viscose blend instead of polyurethane, which has kept more than 2.7 tons of plastic out of our collections so far. Ribbon duos on our hardcovers are 100% recycled plastic. Every book uses lay-flat binding, so it stays open on a desk without you having to hold it down.

We're this specific because the stationery industry is full of vague environmental language, and we'd rather show our work. If a claim here matters to your decision, ask us and we'll send you the certification.

Common questions

Still deciding?

If you're torn between two formats, print both from the free downloads and run them for a couple of weeks. If you're torn between two sizes, go smaller if you carry a bag every day, and larger if you plan at a desk.

And if you'd rather just ask a person, email us. We're a team of seven and we answer our own mail.

Browse the full 2027 collection