Review: Leuchtturm1917 A5 Purple Dotted Notebook

One thing that is essential when you first get interested in Bullet Journalling is a good notebook! You don’t need anything fancy to get started. People in the community tend to prefer dotted notebooks and the Leuchtturm1917 brand is well known as a quality option, although it does come at a price.

I was lucky enough to have been given a Leuchtturm1917 A5 purple dotted notebook for Christmas from my sister, but they usually retail for £12.99. The notebook has a solid hardcover in a lovely vivid purple and it comes with two ribbon page markers as well as a handy elastic band fastener to keep the notebook closed when not in use.

It is made up of 249 pages which are prenumbered making adding pages to your index a cinch, especially as it includes three preprepared index pages ready to go. It also has eight perforated and detachable sheets of paper so you can write notes or shopping lists down, tear them out and take them with you.

The Leuchtturm1917 notebook also has a handy expandable envelope pocket on the back cover which contains some lovely preprinted labels to stick on the front cover and spine which you can use to name and date your bullet journal for archiving when it’s full.

I really like my purple a5 Leuchtturm1917 dotted notebook and have found it perfect for my bullet journaling needs. It’s the perfect size to be portable, whereas my previous a4 notebook was a bit cumbersome. I find the prenumbered and perforated pages very useful as well as the elastic band for closing.

I have to admit that I don’t get much use out of the page marker ribbons and this is for two reasons, the first being that I use sticky tabs to mark pages I frequently refer to and the second reason is because my cat decided to chew most of the ends off so they are a bit short! Haha.

The pages do feel like they are of good quality and thickness (80 gsm) and I am delighted that the paper fibres do not come loose and get stuck in my pen nibs which can be frustrating if using lower quality paper. I have found that some of my pens do ghost (show through) the pages, such as Sharpies, which can be annoying.

Overall I really love the style, quality and the prepared pages which come with the Leuchtturm1917 notebook. It is the perfect foundation for my bullet journal to keep me up to date and on track with my tasks.

I award the purple a5 dotted Leuchtturm1917 notebook 5 out of 5 stars and recommend it for anyone wanting to get into bullet journaling.