In order to produce color ink jet prints with good optical and fastness properties, the use of coated special papers is generally essential. However, the high cost of these media limits their use in home and networked office printing environments and in industrial printing. For this reason, coated papers intended for conventional printing would be of great interest also as ink jet print media. So far, there is no general understanding of their usability in ink jet printing in terms of their optical and fastness properties. This study examines the optical and fastness properties of ink jet prints on coated papers. Three paper sets were used in this study. Reference set consisted of commercial matte-coated ink jet papers. The effects of polymer system and pigment composition on ink jet print quality were studied by means of two pilot paper sets, which had conventional kaolin as the main coating pigment.Generally, the light fastness levels obtained with pilot papers were quite good or in some cases even better than those obtained with commercial papers, but this was found to be dependent on the type of colorant. On the other hand, poor water fastness due to the low cohesion of the coating was the weak point of the studied pilot papers. Within the studied commercial and pigment set papers, the differences between fastness values could not be clearly related to structural properties or the composition of the coating. Instead, within the polymer set, differences in light and water fastness could be explained by differences in the composition of the coatings.