As a certified stationery addict, one of my favourite things about bullet journaling is having an excuse to get all the pretty pens and cute supplies that I need to decorate my bujo spreads. Of course you don’t have to have every pen in the world to make a beautiful spread - as long as you have a good notebook and your favourite pen, you’re good to go! But there are tonnes of tools you can use to really make your bujo POP.

If you’re thinking about starting a bullet journal for productivity or just for the fun of it and you’re thinking of expanding your bullet journal supplies cupboard then you’re in luck! In this post, I’ll be talking about all the journaling supplies you could possibly need!

The first thing you will need is a bullet journal notebook! Honestly, this can be any notebook - dotted, plain, lined, grid, it doesn’t matter. What I absolutely love about bullet journaling is that there are no rules.

The most popular type of notebook in the bujo community is of course the dotted journal. It’s also my favourite type because it makes journaling A LOT easier. You can use the dots to guide you and they’re not going to be as distracting as lines or grids.

Now you have to think about paper grammage. If you’re like me and you like to really get creative with your spreads, I would recommend a journal with 160gsm paper just because they’re thick enough to handle all types of pens and even watercolour paints! My absolute favourite is our very own Tsuki Fuji-San Bullet Journal. The paper is thick and smooth so it’s perfect for heavy doodling and calligraphy and I just love the little details.

Credit: @supermassiveblackink

If you’re more relaxed with the doodling but still want to use brush pens and other heavy ink pens, I would recommend a journal with at least 120gsm paper. Anything less than that can cause ghosting and bleeding.

You will obviously need at least a pen for bullet journaling. Sometimes a regular ballpoint pen is good enough but if you really want to spice up your spreads, you can use fineliners, brush pens, mildliners and more!

For my regular writing, I like to use fineliners, specifically a 0.3 Micron Pen because it’s thin enough so it allows me to write small and I can also add cute little doodles with them. I also like to use highlighters to highlight important notes and brush pens for headers and more doodles.

Gel pens are super useful in bullet journaling because they’re so versatile! You can use them as your main writing pen because they’re usually not too thick or too thin and they glide so smoothly on paper. If you have different coloured gel pens, you can even use them to decorate your spreads.

I love how @thelamejournal uses his Muji Gel Pens to write colourful song lyrics on his bujo because why not?

I absolutely love these MUJI style gel pens because they’re sleek and come in a pack of 12 essential colours for journaling. They also glide smoothly on paper which is the most important part!

These Kawaii Sea Lion Gel Pens are just too cute to pass up! These definitely motivate me to pick them up and start journaling. They’re also very comfortable to hold, lightweight and the ink quality is amazing.

For animal lovers, another must-have would be these Happy Animals Erasable Gel Pens. They come in a set of 4 cute little animals and they’re erasable! So if you’re like me and you make a lot of silly little mistakes, these are definitely essential.

What’s bullet journaling without a bit of calligraphy? You absolutely don’t even have to be good at it, it’s just so fun to do. I always write my headers in calligraphy font and they make my spreads look so much nicer. It also helps break up information in your bullet journal so you can find what you’re looking for faster.

@jen.calligraphy’s daily bullet journal headers always show off her amazing calligraphy skills. I love how the days of the week really stand out in calligraphy! ✒️

I absolutely adore these Japanese Calligraphy Pens because they make calligraphy so much easier. I’m not even a pro calligrapher but I just feel like one whenever I’m using these. It’s a set of 3 with different sizes and my personal favourite is the small rubber tip. It glides smoothly on paper and it’s so flexible that you can really control the thickness of your lines with the amount of pressure you put on the pens.

Another great set of pens for calligraphy is this Set of 24 Double-Sided Fineliner and Brush Pen! The brush pen tip is great for bold calligraphy for your headers and titles whilst the fineliner tip is the perfect tool for adding those extra little details!

Watercolour pens are great for (you guessed it) watercolouring, but they’re also great for calligraphy! You can use them for headers, title pages and adding cute watercolour doodles all over your spreads. There's just so many cute calligraphy and lettering ideas to play with! We already covered some of the reasons that make watercolour pens so amazing, but one of the best things about them is that you can blend the colours, build them up and water them down as much as you please just like regular watercolours. In contrast to regular watercolours, they’re a lot more convenient and depending on the set you get, they usually come with aqua brushes to store water in which makes them a lot more portable!

I love this bullet journal quote page by @dutch_dots! 💜The watercolour effect makes the page look more aesthetically pleasing and I love how she blended all the colours to achieve this galaxy theme.Text

This set of 20 Watercolour Brush Pens are amazing for calligraphy with the flexible tip and the best part is the ink is blendable! So you can totally use these pens to decorate your monthly cover pages as well as your weekly and daily pages. If you’re not a watercolour expert, these are great because they’re so much easier to control!

I also really love these Watercolour Calligraphy Pens. The tips make calligraphy so much easier and they’re blendable so you can use them to watercolour in your bujo as well.

As I mentioned earlier, I love a good micron pen for writing and doodling. It’s just sooo smooth and the ink is amazing. They also come in different nib sizes so they can be used in many different ways. My standard writing pen is a 0.3mm nib but it depends on how small or big you write and how bold you want your writing to be.

This amazing pigma micron pen art by @augustlamm demonstrates how each nib size looks. I love how switching nib sizes can make a huge difference in your bullet journal doodles and notes!

With this set you can go as thin as 0.2mm and as thick as 0.5mm! So you can achieve the tiniest most detailed doodles and the boldest, most attention-grabbing headers on your bullet journal spreads.

I also really love the Sakura Pigma Micron Brush Pen. It’s also really amazing for bullet journal calligraphy and you can even get a bigger set with all the different nib sizes and this brush pen.

These Micron Pens in different colours are a game-changer. They come in flexible rubber tips similar to the Japanese Calligraphy pen so you can definitely do really easy calligraphy with these just by controlling the amount of pressure you put on the nib. I also love that they are available in different colours so you can do all the colourful bujo doodles and calligraphy that you want!

If you’re a bullet journal fan you’ve probably heard of Zebra Mildliner pens. They’re used by sooo many people in the bujo community and I can definitely see why. I would say they’re definitely essential to your bullet journal supplies collection because they just have so many uses. They’re super high-quality Japanese highlighters but you don’t have to use them exclusively to highlight your notes.

They’re double-ended so you can have a chisel nib for highlighting and colouring in bigger areas and a smaller sized round nib for more detailed doodles. They also come in many different gorgeous colours that you can use to zhuzh up your bullet journal themes.

@mizustudy’s super cute Zebra Mildliner bullet journal swatch page

They come in different packs so you can get the set that suits your style! I’m definitely a warm pack kinda gal but I wouldn’t mind having them all. 😍

If you’re not sure about which pack to go for, I would recommend going for the pack of 12 so you can have a range of different colours.

And if you love the zebra mildliner colours but you also love brush pen calligraphy then these mildliner brush pens are for you! You can get individual colours if you want to try them out but don’t want to spend too much money on a massive pack.

We all know highlighters are essential, right? I’ve been using a highlighter since way before I even started bullet journaling and it’s just such a great way to highlight what’s important. I also love using highlighters to add subtle accent colours in my bullet journal spreads.

These highlighters are more traditional but they come in the cutest pastel colours. I love how small and compact they are so you can definitely bullet journal on-the-go with these.

Okay so the first set of highlighters I showed you are small but these cute Vitamin Capsule Highlighters are tiiiiny! Despite the size, they are still very easy to use. This pack comes in 6 different colours so you can even allocate a colour for each type of reminder. So you can highlight your school/uni reminders using the yellow highlighter, work reminders using the purple highlighter, green for personal reminders, etc.

If you’re looking for something with more colour options, these MUJI style highlighters are for you! Each pack comes with 10 beautiful pastel coloured highlighters. I personally love pastel highlighters, they’re easier on the eyes than fluorescent highlighters and they make my bujo spreads so much cuter!

I first heard about brush pens when I first started bullet journaling. They’re definitely used by a lot of bullet journalers especially those who like to show off their calligraphy skills on their monthly covers. Brush pens are also great for colouring in and you can normally get watercolour brush pens for adding watercolour effects to your spreads.

This little bullet journal quote page by @amandarachlee is so simple yet so beautiful!✨ I love how she limited herself to 2 brush pen colours which makes the spread look even more elegant.

I know I’ve already shown you a couple of brush pen options but I just had to include this set to the list! It’s a pack of 36 brush pens for those who just want more colour options (I know I do). The best part about these pens is that they’re double-ended so not only do you get brush pens, you also get fineliners! These are perfect for adding more colour to your spreads, creating a masterpiece on your monthly covers and colour coding your habit trackers.

These metallic brush pens are great for those who have black bullet journal pages, I’ve definitely seen them around. These stand out on black paper and have a funky metallic sheen.

I’m sure you already know that pencils are essential to bullet journaling especially if you like to doodle or draw your own calendar pages and trackers. It’s hard to get all your spreads right on the first try so it’s important to sketch them all out in pencil first. I normally sketch out a rough plan of my monthly covers, calendars, habit trackers, mood trackers, and weekly pages with a pencil.

Of course you can use any pencil you have lying around the house but these MUJI style mechanical pencils are great to have. I love how sleek they look and how easy they are to grip and who doesn’t love a good automatic pencil?

These Classic Macaron Drawing Pencils come in a pack of 12 and my favourite thing about them is that they come in cute pastel colours and a nice black wood so they look ten times cooler than your regular pencil.

Another basic essential that you will absolutely need is a ruler. Rulers are important for drawing straight lines and boxes in your bullet journal spreads. I like to draw my own calendar so drawing 30 even boxes every month can be quite tricky without a ruler. I also use a ruler almost every day to divide each day of the week in my weekly spreads. So I definitely recommend keeping a ruler in the back pocket of your bullet journal if you like to journal on-the-go.

This multi-functional ruler is perfect because it also comes with your essential stencils so you can have the perfect numbers and icons on your bullet journal and a little clip so you can also use it as a bookmark.

I am obsessed with using washi tapes to decorate my bujo spreads and there are sooo many different designs to choose from. They’re not only great for sticking cute little cut-outs or pictures onto your pages, they’re also great for decorations and borders.

Also a nice little bujo hack: you can stick them to a corner of a page and fold it in half to create a cute little index tab to divide your pages.

Cute little DIY bujo tabs by @letteringbytm

If you’re new to the world of washi tapes, I would recommend a set of plain tapes in your favourite colours. They’re such a great way to add a pop of colour to your spreads!

If you want to take it to the next level, you can go for more decorative washi tapes. If you are a massive art nerd like me, you will love these Van Gogh Washi Tapes.

You can also now get decorative washi tapes that are more like stickers which are sooo cute and so easy to use. If you’re not a massive doodler, these are perfect for decorating your succulent-themed bujo spreads without having to draw everything out.

Stickers are amazing for bullet journaling. Hands up if you used to collect stickers! 🙋🏻‍♀️They are just such an easy way to make your spreads look more “aesthetic” without having to put too much effort into doodling everything. If you don’t have the time to create a masterpiece each month you set up your bujo but you still want beautiful spreads, then I would recommend getting all the cute stickers!

These stickers are perfect for travel journaling and for travel-inspired monthly themes. You can also stick famous landmarks on your bujo calendar to mark when you’re travelling!

These Shiba Inu stickers are soooo cute they will surely brighten up your bullet journal spreads. If you’re a Shiba Inu fan (and I mean who isn’t?) then these are perfect for you!

These stickers are for the fashion lovers!! They’re great for decorating your fashion spreads and mixing and matching theme can give you some serious #OOTD inspo.

Sticky notes can sound so boring if you think about it but they can be very useful for keeping tabs in your bujo or adding temporary notes that you don’t want to write permanently on your spreads. And if you get the right ones, they’re definitely NOT going to bore you.

These Dreams and Wishes Sticky Notes are soooo dreamy that you could even make a whole bullet journal monthly theme on them.

I love these Kawaii Animal Sticky Notes and Index Set, they’re super cute and you get big ones for bigger notes and smaller ones that you can use for smaller notes or as index tabs so they’re definitely useful for bullet journaling.

Having told you aaaalll of that, I still want to say that you definitely do not need fancy supplies for bullet journaling. Bullet journaling is for everyone and if you really want to get creative, you can definitely go far even with just a pen and a notebook. It’s obviously just nice to have all the cute stationery to motivate you to journal!

If this has inspired you to get started on your own bullet journaling practice we've got an in-depth bullet journaling guide that will walk you through everything you'll need to know.

Still not quite enough supplies? Check out our free Bullet Journal Monthly Printable Calendar!