Schmincke Horadam Watercolor Review Color Chart Lightfast Testing

Schmincke Horadam is a professional quality watercolor paint from Germany. They have a huge fan base as one of the leading manufacturers of paints, metallic powders and mediums. All of the products I've tried by them have had a very nice quality, but also a pretty hefty price tag. Part of this is location, as these paints are quite expensive after importing when compared to other brands here in the USA. When you can find a sale though, they are absolutely lovely paints.

This paint is not vegan, it contains ox gall usually obtained from the gallbladder of cows. This is not super common with modern watercolors. It contains cholesterol and is mainly used to increase flow. Even with this additive, I find these paints to be very well behaved, sometimes surprisingly staying where you put them. They are highly pigmented, re-wet easily from tube or pan, and come in a huge range of 140+ colors. They offer several unique colors, like my personal favorite heavily granulating Mahogany Brown. They have a lovely deep version of Potter's Pink, which I could only find from two other brands including Daniel Smith and Winsor & Newton (who offers a different shade).

I recently bought the 12 full pan curved oak set from Jacksons and could not be happier with it. You can find this set on their website here.

See details on how this paint performs, including wet on wet wash, lifting, staining, lightfastness, masstone to diluted and more on the following swatch card color chart. You can also see how these compare to other company's paints. View each color side by side with other brands of the same color on the pigment database pages.

Swatch cards:

    

    

  

 

 

I currently have ongoing lightfast testing and upcoming reviews for this brand. This page will be updated again in the near future.

 

Where to buy?

Schmincke Horadam individual watercolors in tubes or pans are available worldwide here from Jackson's, or here from Blick USA. 

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