Have you ever wondered how much origami paper is visible after you’ve folded your paper crane, or jumping frog? Typically, origami paper has one side marked with a pretty pattern, while the other is blank, so that the finished piece of origami art is completely made up of the patterned paper, but in reality, how much of the original square is actual shown, when accounting for the folds making up the design?

Perhaps its an odd thing to wonder, but the results are interesting to look at. To start, I took what is probably one of the most well known origami projects, the paper crane, and tried to make one on my own. There’s hundreds, if not thousands of sites online with directions of how to fold these famous birds, so finding directions was no trouble at all.

Here’s my first attempt, which I then proceeded to draw on and label all visible surfaces, from the tops and bottoms of the wings to the legs and body. I was meticulous with the labels, as I didn’t want to lose track of what ended up where when unfolding, and I’m glad I did.

As you can probably tell by the angles of the lined paper I used, the entire pattern shown is actually on a 45 degree angle. The wings make up the upper left and lower right corners, with the next and tail take the opposite corners. What little of the body is shown mirror each other on the diagonal axis. But just how much is shown?

Luckily, that too is solvable. By unfolding the now colored bird, and remaking the flat square into a digital format, we can calculate the percentage of white uncolored paper against the total paper used.

I used this website to find the average colors, and was shocked to find that only about 29% of the original square needs to be colored, with most of that being from the wings! All the rest is hidden by the folds of the crane that give it the shape and structure needed to stand on its own. Just imagine, you could write a promise or a note to a loved one, and keep it hidden in the folds of the beautiful paper crane. Or you could print specific things on specific parts of the crane, and know that they’ll be centered on the wings when the final folds are completed.

I repeated the process for a few other common beginner origami pieces, and some revealed patterns are definitely more interesting than others. Take the jumping frog, for example. A fun, tactile piece of art you can play with, pressing down on the back to make the paper critter jump, or sometimes even flip. I thought, given the frogs wide back, that it would include more of the patterned paper than the crane. Nope!

Only ~21% of the colored paper is used for the jumping frog, with the entire left side of the page free for adding what you think this frog should dream of, or a secret message for them to carry out. Perfect for frog espionage…

Others I’ve tried are an origami heart, which actually shows some of the back of the paper, and overall looks strange when flattened, and a fortune teller, which uses an impressive 75% of the paper, when accounting for the unfolding fortunes. Are there any other animals or patterns you’d like to see? Leave a comment below, or try this out for yourself!