Which Paper Kings Design Should You Fold First? A Difficulty Guide

We get asked a lot which design to start with, so here's our honest breakdown, sorted by how hard each one actually is to fold.

Easy — start here if you're new to folding

• Paper Boat — our very first origami product, no cuts or glue, and it actually floats

• Paper Boomerang — one of the first folds any of us ever learned

• Arrowhead — a simple dart-style plane, fast off the hand and hard to mess up

• El Dardo — nearly all point, built for speed, very forgiving fold

• Paper Ninja Star — a two-piece interlocking fold with no glue needed

• Paper Fortune Teller — the classic notebook-paper fold, just on real origami paper

• Paper Tree — a simple trunk-and-canopy fold, good first "non-animal" design

• Paper Drone — a simple four-fold body, good for a quick win

• Paper Balloon — the classic "water bomb" fold that puffs up when you blow into it

• Paper Frog — simple fold, and it actually hops when you press the back crease

Medium — once you've got the basics down

• Paper Crane — our most popular design and the classic origami proportions

• Paper Butterfly — quick wing folds, but the body crease takes practice

• Paper Box — a modular fold that's sturdy enough to actually hold small items

• Origami Lotus Flower — layered petal folds, our newest design

• Paper Wallet — an envelope-style fold with a working card pocket

• Paper Tank — boxier and more angular, built more for display

• Paper Bat — a single-sheet wing shape with no cuts, designed by our DOO Trip Pearson

• Most of our contest-winning planes (Artemis, C-13 Cobra, Saab 35 Draken, The Walloping Cebu, The Sienna, Mighty Eagle, Emperion I)

Medium-Hard — for when you want a challenge

• F-11d BlackWing — a swept-wing fold with extra creases most planes skip

• Anaconda — our first award-winning plane, a long tapered body that's tricky to keep symmetrical

Whichever you start with, the biggest tip we can give: crease everything sharper than feels necessary. Nearly every fold that doesn't sit right traces back to one soft crease a few steps earlier.