I have had people ask me if you can laminate folded paper (addressed here), but I recently had someone ask if you can fold laminated paper. I suppose this is the other side of the coin. So can it be done? You bet, but you’re going to need a special tool.

Have you ever heard of a paper scorer? Paper scoring machines are special machines designed to crease paper for folding. These machines are generally reserved for use on thick cardstock or laminated documents.

How does a paper scoring machine work? They use a fine edge (or rolling wheel), along with a lot of pressure, to crease the paper. Once a paper scoring machine has been used on laminated paper, there will be a long creased line along the document. This crease makes it easy to fold the document. The crease, or fold, is clean and non-wrinkled. The end results look great!

So in what kind of a situation would you need to fold a laminated document? An example would be a restaurant menu. Laminated menus look great, but once laminated, often need to be folded. Some restaurants bypass this and simply use a large non-folded laminated menu. If you want to fold that menu, however, you must use a paper scorer.

Traditional paper folding machines cannot handle laminated paper. Not only would the end results look horrible, most paper folding machines have a hard enough time handling glossy and coated paper.

Paper scoring machines come in manual and automatic designs. You can find our entire selection of paper scoring machines and creasers here. Good luck!

I had someone recently ask me if it is possible to laminate a sheet of card stock or paper that has already been folded. This was in relation to restaurant menus, but can be applied to many other projects. The answer is fairly short and simple.

You can laminate paper that has already been folded, but you probably won’t be happy with the results. This is because the crease in folded paper creates an uneven surface. While this surface can be laminated, air will often get trapped under the lamination film and the end result will be pretty ugly.

Standard copy paper may come out just fine, but card stock is where you run into the biggest problems. This isn’t to say it will always turn out bad, but I can’t make any promises. The uneven ridge created by the fold is hard for the laminator to flatten out.

If you need to fold something that is laminated, I recommend using a paper scoring machine. These machines, sometimes called creasers, will crease the paper down the middle, making it easy to fold. The end result looks great.

So in relation to menus, I highly recommend laminating them first and then scoring them. You will be happy with the results.

You can find our laminators here and our paper scoring machines here. Still have questions about laminating and folding paper? Contact one of our specialists at 1-800-658-8788 or post your question in a comment.

Have a great day!