Coated paper for high-quality printing comprises a fine particulate mineral coating, applied as an aqueous suspension and fixed to the fibrous paper substrate with a binder. The shrinkage occurring while the coating layer dries onto the substrate has been measured by observing the deflection of strips of a synthetic substrate coated with ground calcium carbonate with different binders. The force acting on the surface of the strips to cause a given deflection has been calculated using the elementary beam theory. The porosities of the dry structures were measured by compression-corrected mercury porosimetry. We show that the shrinkage occurring during the drying of the coating layer is mainly due to capillary forces acting as the water recedes in the porous structure, while the binder can act to retain the stress resulting from such forces. Starch produced much higher stresses than latex.