The Best Watercolor Pans

Interested in a good watercolor pan set? Are you looking through many brands and unsure which pigments and features to consider? Don’t worry, we’ll show you the best options with the best value for money so you can make a successful purchase!

Analysis of the Best Quality-Price Watercolor Pans

Of all the types and brands of watercolor pans available on the market, we have analyzed their quality-price ratio and to make your search easier, we have selected the best ones. You just need to choose the one you need by looking at its features.

Comparison of the Best Watercolor Pans of 2024

What are the best watercolor pans

There are many brands of watercolor pans in the market, each with their own characteristics and advantages. However, there are some brands that stand out above the rest due to their quality, pigmentation, and ease of use.

Best professional watercolors

These brands are highly respected by watercolor artists for the quality of their products and durability of their pigments. Each brand has its own personality and distinctive features, allowing artists to choose the brand that best suits their style and needs.

Among the best brands of watercolor pans are:

Winsor & Newton, Schmincke, Sennelier, Daniel Smith, and M. Graham.

Each of these watercolor brands has characteristics that make them unique. Below, I will describe some of their main features:

Winsor & Newton

Winsor & Newton, founded in London in 1832, is one of the earliest and most well-known brands to produce watercolor pans. It has a long tradition of manufacturing art materials and is known for its commitment to quality and innovation.

The brand is known for its high quality and wide range of vibrant and bright colors. It is also famous for the durability of its pigments and its smooth and creamy consistency.

Winsor & Newton watercolors are made using high-quality pigments, which are carefully selected and subjected to rigorous quality controls to ensure their purity and consistency.

Another distinctive feature of Winsor & Newton watercolors is their wide range of colors and tones. The brand offers over 100 different colors in its line of watercolor pans, allowing artists to create a wide variety of effects and styles in their works.

In addition, Winsor & Newton is known for its “professional series” watercolors, which use high-quality pigments and offer excellent transparency, color saturation, and lightfastness. These watercolors are commonly used in professional and exhibition works.

Finally, Winsor & Newton also offers a line of “student series” watercolor pans that are more affordable but still maintain good quality. These watercolors are ideal for beginner artists or those looking to experiment with watercolors without spending too much money.

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Schmincke

Schmincke is another pioneer brand in the production of watercolor pans, established in Germany in 1881.

It is known for its wide selection of colors and high pigment concentration, making its watercolors very vibrant and luminous. Additionally, its watercolors are characterized by their ease of use and uniform blending.

An important feature that sets Schmincke watercolors apart from other brands of watercolor pans is their high concentration of high-quality pigments. Schmincke uses a significantly larger amount of pure pigments in its watercolors, resulting in greater color saturation, brightness, and depth.

Another distinctive feature of Schmincke watercolors is its wide range of colors. The brand offers over 140 different colors in its line of watercolor pans.

The brand carefully selects and rigorously tests its pigments to ensure their consistency and purity.

It also uses a hot pressing technique that ensures the pigments blend uniformly and the watercolor pans are more resistant to cracking.

Finally, Schmincke is a German brand with a long tradition of producing high-quality art materials, ensuring that its watercolors are consistently valued and used by professional and amateur artists worldwide.

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Sennelier

Founded in France in 1887, these brands still exist today and are highly respected by watercolor artists worldwide.

Sennelier offers an excellent range of tones and exceptional pigment quality. Its watercolors are characterized by being highly pigmented, allowing for intense and deep colors with only a small amount of paint. In addition, its watercolors dry quickly and have good blending ability.

The French company is known for using natural ingredients in the production of its products, including the pigments it uses in its watercolors. Sennelier manufactures watercolors from natural and synthetic pigments, and its “La Petite Aquarelle” range of watercolors is exclusively composed of natural pigments.

Natural pigments are extracted from minerals, plants, and animals, and offer a range of rich and vibrant colors that are very popular among artists. In addition, natural pigments are known to be more resistant to the passage of time than synthetic pigments, which means that paints made with natural pigments maintain their color and brightness for longer.

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Daniel Smith

The watercolor brand Daniel Smith was founded in 1976 in Seattle, United States, by artist Daniel Smith and his wife. Initially, the company focused on producing high-quality pigment-based watercolors for artistic use.

It is known for its wide range of colors, including some unique and rare pigments.

One of the distinctive features of Daniel Smith’s watercolor pans is their ability to produce intense and vibrant tones, even with a small amount of paint. Additionally, Daniel Smith watercolors are characterized by excellent transparency and good blending ability, allowing artists to achieve a wide range of tones and effects.

Another notable feature of Daniel Smith watercolors is that the company has developed a series of “PrimaTek” watercolors that use natural and rare mineral pigments in their composition. These pigments offer unique and vibrant colors that are not found in other watercolor brands and are very popular among artists looking to experiment with new tones and effects in their work.

The Daniel Smith company has been a pioneer in the use of high-quality pigments in the production of watercolors and has developed a series of innovative techniques and processes to produce high-quality watercolors. Additionally, the company has been recognized for its commitment to sustainability and social responsibility and has established direct relationships with pigment suppliers worldwide to ensure the quality and traceability of its products.

Today, Daniel Smith watercolors are highly valued by watercolor artists around the world for their quality, color intensity, and ability to produce unique and vibrant effects.

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M. Graham

The M. Graham watercolor brand was founded in 1996 in the state of Oregon, United States, by artists James and Vicky Graham. The Grahams wanted to create a line of high-quality watercolors that stood out from existing brands, and to achieve this, they decided to use honey as a key ingredient in their formula.

M. Graham watercolors are characterized by their high pigment concentration and excellent blending ability. In addition, the honey used in the formula of M. Graham watercolors gives them exceptional shine and transparency, making them very popular among watercolor artists.

Honey is a natural ingredient that acts as a binder in the manufacture of watercolors. When used in the manufacture of watercolors, honey helps to maintain the moisture and softness of the paint, allowing for better dissolution in water and easier use.

Instead of using gum arabic or other synthetic binders commonly used in watercolor manufacturing, M. Graham uses pure and natural bee honey as a binder.

Bee honey is a natural ingredient that has adhesive and stabilizing properties, meaning it helps to keep the pigments of the watercolors together and keeps them moist for longer on the artist’s palette. Additionally, honey helps to create a smooth and creamy texture in the paint, making it easier to mix and apply to paper.

The use of honey as a binder is a distinctive feature of M. Graham watercolors, and is one of the reasons why many artists prefer this brand of watercolors. The honey used in M. Graham watercolors comes from local bees and is processed at the company’s factory in Oregon, United States.

M. Graham offers both watercolor tubes and watercolor pans. They offer a line of watercolor pans called the “M. Graham Watercolor Travel Set,” which includes 12 watercolor pans in a portable metal box. At the time of writing this article, Amazon did not have any in pans or godets, but they do have them available in tubes. However, even though this section is dedicated to pans, I still recommend the tube option.

Buy watercolor paints online in pans, cheap with the best offers and discounts.

We have prepared this guide to make your search easier, where you can find all the information you need about the best watercolor pan sets available in the market, the best deals and discounts. Enter and discover everything you need!

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• Superior quality, natural ingredients are carefully selected every year for each formula for further optimization.

• Traditional formulas since 1881 are the same in pans and tubes.

• Formulas used by classic artists such as Emil Nolde and Oskar Kokoschka.

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Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolor offers artists the widest and most balanced range of pigments with optimal permanence possibilities.

The brilliance, transparency, and purity of color that this watercolor possesses is superior to any other. This special pocket-sized field box unfolds into a kit that fits in the palm of your hand and contains the following elements: 2 mixing palettes, a water container and bottle, sponge, travel folding brush, and 12 colors in half pans.

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• Refillable brush with synthetic fine tip

• Pocket-sized set with rounded edges • Designed for outdoor use

• Brand: Winsor & Newton

• Winsor & Newton’s Cotman watercolors form a range of colors manufactured to our usual high quality standards, but with an economical cost by replacing some of the more expensive pigments with less expensive alternatives.

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Paul Rubens Watercolor uses ultra-pure pigment that has been delicately ground, making it difficult to get a gray color or produce waste. You can see that there are only small differences when it is wet or dry.

Its good transparency and resistance to staining, plus excellent lightfastness, make for good working properties. The high-quality watercolor paint ensures that your masterpieces will remain vibrant throughout the ages.