Cardboard & Paperboard Materials

Is Paperboard the Same Thing as Cardboard?

No, and this mix up causes more wrong orders than almost anything else in packaging. A paperboard is a single, dense sheet of compressed paper fiber, thicker than regular paper but thinner and more rigid than corrugated board. Think cereal box, shoe box, or a folding carton. Cardboard is the everyday word people use for almost anything box shaped, but in the trade it usually means corrugated board specifically, a fluted middle layer glued between two flat liners, which is what gives it real crush resistance for shipping and heavier products.

If your product is lightweight, sold mostly for its look on a shelf, or needs to fold flat and assemble easily, paperboard is usually the right call and the more cost effective one. If it needs to survive a delivery truck, stacking, or rough handling, you want corrugated. Getting this backwards is the single most common reason a first order comes back wrong.

What Are the Main Types of Paperboard?

Paperboard isn’t one material, it’s a category with real differences between grades, and this is usually where a spec sheet stops making sense to anyone outside the industry.

• SBS (Solid Bleached Sulfate) is the premium grade, made from bleached virgin wood pulp. It’s what you want when print quality and a clean, bright surface matter most, cosmetics boxes, pharmaceutical cartons, high end retail packaging.
• CRB (Coated Recycled Board) is made from recycled fiber with a coated top layer for printing. It costs less than SBS and is the standard choice for everyday packaging like dry food boxes, household goods, and general retail cartons where the graphics still need to look clean but ultra premium isn’t the goal.
• Kraft paperboard is uncoated, natural brown, and prized more for its strength and rustic look than for fine print detail, common in food service and eco positioned branding.
• Chipboard is the thinnest and most affordable grade, often used as a rigid backing or inner structure rather than the visible outer layer of a box.

Which one you need depends on the same two questions every time: does this box need to look premium under store lighting, or does it mainly need to protect the product and keep cost per unit down.