Paper isn't an afterthought. It's the first decision that decides whether the last one works.
Screenprinting is layers. Five, six, seven passes through the press, each one wet ink sitting on top of the last. Cheap paper buckles under that. It absorbs unevenly, cockles at the edges, and by pass four you're fighting the sheet instead of the image. I found that out the hard way more times than I'd like to admit, trial pulls that looked perfect on pass one and fell apart by pass five.
The paper I mainly use now is Somerset Satin, either 320gsm or 420gsm tub-sized if I'm feeling flush. Sometimes I'll start a run on cheaper paper and move onto the good stuff partway through, but that causes its own problems — the surface texture and absorption are different, so you get real inconsistencies across the edition.
What matters more than the name on the box:
Weight first. Anything under 250gsm moves too much once it's holding four or five layers of wet ink. Heavier stock stays flat, holds registration, and doesn't wave at you off the drying rack.
Cotton rag over wood pulp, most of the time. Wood pulp drinks ink unevenly, you get patchy colour where the fibres soak differently across the sheet. Cotton holds the ink where you put it. Costs more. Worth it on anything going out as a numbered edition.
Archival quality isn't optional if someone's going to frame it. A print going on a wall for twenty years needs paper that doesn't yellow, doesn't degrade, doesn't let the colour drift. Cheap paper looks fine on day one and lets you down by year three.
None of this is about buying the most expensive sheet in the catalogue. It's about matching the paper to what the print actually needs — how many passes, how saturated the colour, how long it has to last. Get that wrong and no amount of skill on the screen saves it.
Music For Everyone went through this exact test: five screens, and the paper had to hold flat and in registration through every one. Let's Go All The Way took seven.
That's the bit people don't see when they buy a print. Not just the design, not just the ink. The sheet underneath it, chosen to hold up to everything that gets printed on top.