A high quality ink jet recording medium with a printed image non-vulnerable and excellent in scratch resistance is obtained with an ink jet recording using a water pigment ink. An ink jet recording medium having a substrate and an ink receiving layer including an inorganic particle and a binder on the substrate is provided. A surface of the ink receiving layer has (a) a projected valley portion depth (Rvk) of not less than 20 nm and not more than 100, (b) an arithmetic average roughness (Ra) of not less than 5 nm and not more than 100 nm, and (c) an average spacing (S) of local peaks of not more than 1.0 μm.