Coloured paper, including sticky notes, white envelopes and thermal fax paper, can be recycled about 10 times. When we recycle paper, what we're trying to do is recover the fibres. The washing process needed to recycle coloured paper breaks the fibres and reduces the number of times they can be reused. White paper, which usually has the longest fibres, can be sold to recyclers for almost twice the price of coloured paper. Other kinds of paper also tend to come back in much the same form after recycling.
Newspapers come back as newsprint.
Corrugated cardboard, brown paper bags, and brown envelopes generally come back as cardboard. The exception is glossy magazines and flyers. The gloss on the paper is a coating of clay that must be removed before the paper can be recycled. The extra level of processing shortens the fibres so that they're usually good only for tissue and toilet paper. Other materials go through less dramatic changes.