1 cm graph paper, US Letter
Centimetre squares on an 8.5 × 11 inch sheet. An awkward combination to buy and a common one to need, because plenty of places are metric in everything except their paper.
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Metric squares, North American paper
Canada went metric in the 1970s and never changed its stationery: the standard sheet there is US Letter, not A4. That leaves Canadian classrooms and offices wanting centimetre grids on an 8.5 × 11 page, a combination almost no printed pad supplies. The same applies to metric work inside the United States — laboratory, engineering, and increasingly school maths, where the units are SI and the paper is whatever is in the tray.
A scale you can use straight away
One centimetre to one metre gives 1:100, and a Letter sheet at that scale covers about 20 by 26 metres — a house footprint or a small garden. One centimetre to ten centimetres gives 1:10, which suits furniture and joinery. Because the PDF prints at true size, a ruler laid on the printed sheet reads correct distances directly, with no scale rule and no conversion.
Large squares are also an accessibility choice
Centimetre squares are the standard for early number work, because one digit per box makes column arithmetic self-aligning without any instruction. They are equally the right choice for anyone working with tremor, low vision or reduced fine motor control. Pair the coarse grid with a light grey line weight and it guides the hand without dominating the page.
Printing it accurately
This only measures correctly if your printer doesn't rescale the page. In the print dialog set Scale: 100% — not "Fit to page" or "Shrink oversized pages". If you're not sure it worked, print the calibration page, measure the ruler on it with a real ruler, and it will tell you exactly what your printer is doing to the page.