Gouache has become much more popular over the past few years and for good reason. It has the unique water-soluble characteristics of watercolor with the opacity of an acrylic, making it the best of both worlds.
This makes it a unique and versatile medium that is great for illustration, painting on-the-go and makes cleanup fast and easy. Whether you are an experienced watercolorist or prefer acrylics, gouache is a medium that you should consider trying.
Selecting Your Gouache Paint
The following guide will help you understand gouache and choose the paint set that works best for you.
Tubes and Pans
One of the first decisions you need to make when purchasing gouache is whether you prefer using tubes or pans. While tubes are ready to go or can be mixed with water to thin the paint, like watercolor, pans need water and a little time to activate.
Tubes can be more challenging to travel with, but higher quality tubes can also be added to a pan from the tube and allowed to dry. Tubes are also easier to work with and give you better control over the opacity of your paints.
Pans are very easy to travel with and can activate and be put away quickly. All you need is a water brush and a few drops of water and you’re ready to paint. They are also perfect for quick paintings and are easy to use on the fly.
Opacity
Gouache is known for being opaque. However, gouache paints can vary in opacity based on the pigments and formulas used. If you want truly opaque gouache, check the manufacturer’s website for information on each shade.
Also, consider using tubes instead of pans. Tubes don’t have to be mixed with water to use and are much easier to use as an opaque paint, much like you would use acrylic. In addition, you may wish to use acryla gouache if you need absolute opacity without the sheen of acrylic paint.
Lightfastness and Permanence
Each brand has its own lightfastness and permanence rating system. M. Graham uses a lightfastness rating of LFI to LFIII with LFI being excellent and LFIII being Acceptable. Winsor & Newton uses a Permanence rating system with AA, A, B, and C class ratings a rating system consisting of plus symbols with +++ being the most permanent and + being the least. Check with the manufacturer’s website if you have questions about the permanence or lightfastness ratings.
It is also important to note that some shades will be less permanent in almost every brand. A good example of this is crimson red. This is due to the type of pigment used to create the shade. The industry pigments for this shade are simply not as permanent as other shades, reducing its permanence.
Gouache vs. Watercolor
Gouache was created as a more opaque alternative to watercolor for the purpose of creating illustrations. Like watercolor, it is water-soluble. However, it has a few characteristics that are unique to gouache.
The opacity is the greatest difference. Straight out of the tube, you will notice that gouache is far more opaque than watercolor. You can thin it significantly with water, but it will never be as transparent as watercolor.
Another difference is that gouache is often very easy to reactivate on the paper once dry. This means that it doesn’t layer as well as watercolor and will lift the color beneath the layer if you get it too wet or blend the paint too much.
Mixing Colors – How Many Colors Do You Need?
The bare minimum paints that you can get away with are three. You need a yellow, blue, and red in order to mix most colors. You can also mix various shades of black with these three shades, but it can be challenging. However, if you wish to lighten a shade and maintain its opacity, you will also need white.
If you are purchasing a student grade gouache set, it would be in your best interest to purchase a set containing at lt least 2 colors, including white and black. However, if you are on a budget but want to invest in high-quality fine artist paints, you can get by with three to five colors at first.
Designer’s Gouache or Acryla Gouache
Designer’s Gouache was the original gouache created for designers and illustrators as an alternative to watercolor. It is opaque and fully water-soluble, making it behave like watercolor but with enough opacity that it can be photographed well for illustrations.
Acryla gouache is a more recent hybrid of gouache with acrylic binders. This gouache is water-soluble while wet, but once dry it can’t be reactivated like designer’s gouache. This makes it easy to layer without the pigment showing through or mixing with the top layer. Unlike acrylic, acryla gouache dries velvet matte and smooth.
Best Gouache Paints on the Market
The following gouache paint sets are great to get you started with gouache. There are a variety of paints on this list from student grade to fine artist grade to choose from and you are sure to find a set that best meets your needs.
| Image | Product | |
|---|---|---|
Best Gouache Paint Set
| Winsor & Newton Designers' Gouache Primary Paint Set
| Check Price |
Best Budget 
| Arteza Gouache Paint 12mL 60 Tube Paint Set
| Check Price |
Best for Artists on Budget 
| M. Graham 1/2oz. Primary Gouache 5 Tube Paint Set
| Check Price |
Best for Beginners 
| Caran d'Ache Gouache Studio 15 Tin
| Check Price |
Best Acryla Set 
| Holbein Acryla Gouache Mixing Set
| Check Price |
1. Winsor & Newton Designers’ Gouache Primary Color Paint Set – Best Fine Artist Quality Set
Unpacking and First Impressions
Winsor and Newton designer gouache is originally from the UK. Primary Color Paint Set offers 6 colors in 14 mL tubes, including signature Winsor & Newton shades. It contains Primary Red, Primary Yellow, Primary Blue, Permanent Green Middle, Ivory Black, and Zinc White. It’s kind of interesting to see a green in a primary set, but it will make mixing browns and neutral greens a bit easier. You can also get some colors in bigger tubes.
They all have a beautiful matte finish and are marked as opaque and semi-opaque colors. You can find all the information about the colors and their characteristics including color name, color swatch, permanence, series number, transparency, and lightfastness both on the tube and on Winsor & Newton website.
This set is a good basic mixing set and will make it easy to produce most of the shades that you need to make your gouache paintings stand out. It includes black and white, which are also nice to have with a gouache primary set.
Performance
It’s good quality paint suitable for artists, designers, and illustrators. The strengths of Winsor & Newton are bright clean colors with a high pigmental load that prevents the paints to become muddy after a larger number of color mixes. As with most Winsor & Newton products, their gouache paint is smooth and predictably enjoyable to work with.
They also have a good covering, which allows you to overlay opaque layers easily. When you squeeze the paint out of the tube, unfortunately, the consistency is not that creamy, but it only takes more mix with the brush to get the fluid consistency.
The paint gets very easy to handle when it’s diluted with water so we would recommend you add water to help the flow of your brush. It will also prevent the paint from cracking. And since it is very pigmented and opaque, you will still get nice flat and rich colors.
With more transparent washes, they perform very similarly to watercolors. The intensely pigmented paints mean that you really have to dilute them in order to get a watercolor consistency. This means that these small tubes should last you quite a while.
Best of all, if you allow your paint to fully dry and add another layer on top, it won’t lift the layer below. This is a common complaint with gouache paints, but with these paints, you don’t have that issue. The paints do reactivate but are more similar to watercolor in this respect.
Here’s a good set of colors to start:
Pros and Cons
Final Thoughts
Any professional artist is familiar with the Winsor & Newton brand of art supplies. Their paints are among the most beloved paints in the world. They are known for using high-quality pigments and binders that create paints that activate quickly are a true joy to work with.
It is worth noting that these paints do stain plastic and metal tins, so you may need to use a ceramic palette to mix them on if this bothers you. Otherwise, it is an exceptional set that most gouache artists, new or experienced, will love.
2. Arteza Gouache Paint 60 Tube Paint Set – Best Budget-Friendly Set
Arteza is a newer brand of art supplies, but it is growing fast and continues to expand and offer budget-friendly student grade and professional quality art supplies. Among their most beloved products is their gouache. With this set, it is easy to see why so many people enjoy these paints.
Unpacking and First Impressions
This set is huge with 60 colors, including 10 metallic and opalescent shades.
The trays come stacked neatly inside the box with six tubes per tray. Each tube is 12mL in size. This makes it convenient to pull out only the tubes you are working with and keep them in a tray on your desk or table while you paint.
On the top of the box there is information on all 60 colors, which includes the color number and name, light fastness, opacity, and pigments.
Labels on the tubes are not exactly reliable. Some labels don’t match up with the color that’s actually in the tube so you have to watch out the color ahead of time to see what it really looks like.
Performance
These paints are creamy in consistency and are fairly pigmented. However, it is worth noting that some of the opaque shades aren’t quite as opaque as the label claims. This is inconsistent from shade to shade, so be sure to swatch shades before you begin.
Having this number of colors in a set is nice, but not necessary. It is nice to see metallics and pearlescent shades included in a set. This set would be good for beginners or people who don’t enjoy mixing or prefer consistent pigment in the shades they use.
Some of the colors like lemon, yellow and yellow ochre are made up of just one pigment while others are made up of two, three, or even four pigments.
There are only 18 pigments used for 60 colors. It means that a lot of the colors are made up of mixes of the same pigments. You could mix a lot of these colors on your own and save some money. So it’s really up to you, whether or not this set is worth it.
We recommend getting the 60-color set to have cleaner colors from the start that you can mix with one another and learn a bit more about color mixing. You can really mix things up and get some really interesting color combos.
These paints are ACMI certified non-toxic, which is interesting to find in an artist’s quality paint, as these are advertised. If you have children or wish to paint with children in your home or studio, this is good to know.
Pros and Cons
Final Thoughts
One of the major downfalls of this brand is that you can’t purchase individual tubes of paint if you run out. Most artists tend to have their favorites and will inevitably run out of them from time to time. This means you would have to purchase an entire set to replace one purchase a tube from another brand.
These paints are also only available online. Meaning, if you run out while in the middle of a painting project, you’re going to have to wait at least a couple of days to receive your new paints.
3. M. Graham Primary Gouache 5 Tube Paint Set – Best for Artists on Budget
Unpacking and First Impressions
This is a nice basic set for any beginner gouache artist on a budget. The tubes are small but will last you a while if you’re careful with them. And since they are non-toxic, they would be great for children who want to start experimenting with gouache paints. These paints are manufactured in the USA.
The paint is described as being highly pigmented with a velvety matte finish. It has excellent lightfastness ratings across all colors in the set which is great news for artists who want their paintings to last over time.
This paint set is small, but it has every color that you need to get started painting with gouache. It includes five 15mL tubes of Cobalt Blue, Naphthol Red, Azo Yellow, Ivory Black, and Titanium White. These five shades will allow you to mix secondary and tertiary colors with ease.
The tubes are small, but depending on how much you dilute your gouache, they could last a long time. If you don’t dilute your gouache you will go through them quickly. These paints have enough pigment to be able to be mixed with water without losing opacity, but can be used straight out of the tube.
Or you can choose your own set of colors from the range of single tubes, for example:
- Cobalt Blue
- Naphthol Red or Cadmium Red
- Azo Yellow or Hansa Yellow
- Permanent Green Light or Sap Green
- Titanium White
- Ivory Black
Performance
These gouache paints are highly pigmented and don’t have any chalky fillers, so there’s no streakiness or chalky texture. It also means that you can dilute them without losing opacity or pigment. However, it is worth noting that the Naphthol Red and Azo Yellow are semi-opaque, meaning that if you want a more opaque color wash, you can’t dilute them as much.
It is worth noting is that if you are used to using watercolor, you will need to add white paint to gouache instead of water to lighten the shad. Gouache doesn’t allow the paper’s whiteness or light to show through. This means that your colors can end up looking much darker on paper than you intended.
The paints go on smooth and are creamy in texture. They have a unique quality that honey binder gives watercolor. If you enjoy this in your watercolor paints, you will be pleased to find it in this gouache set.
The only real downside of these paints is that they don’t include any sort of mixing guide or color chart for you to follow along with while painting.
Pros and Cons
Final Thoughts
It is a great artist-grade mixing set, but it’s worth noting that you will probably need to purchase a few individual tubes in order to expand your color range and achieve more neutral shades in your paintings. This probably isn’t a problem for most artists wishing to expand their gouache collection.
4. Caran d’Ache Gouache Studio 15 Tin – Best for Beginners
Pan sets are great to travel with and are a beloved feature of painting with watercolor and gouache paints. Since the paint can be reactivated with water and dries quickly, pans won’t spill and are convenient to carry in a bag. In addition, tins contain a mixing palette on which paints can be dried and reactivated when needed.
Unpacking and First Impressions
This set has everything a gouache beginner could possibly need, except for paper. It includes 15 colors with a wide range of orange, blues, greens, and reds as well as black and a tube of white gouache. It’s a nice set for painting straight out of the tin or mixing your own shades.
It also comes in an attractive tin that’s easy to store on your desk or carry around for painting on the go. This makes these gouache paints one of the more convenient sets you’ll find on this list; all you need is a paintbrush!
The pan sizes are small which could be seen as both a pro and con because you’ll go through them quickly if you’re not careful, but on the bright side, this means that the paints are highly concentrated so you don’t need to use much each time.
The tube of white gouache will make it easier to keep the white gouache opaque since water doesn’t have to be added to activate it. This will ensure that you can use it to paint clouds, white-capped waves, or highlights without transparency.
Performance
This is a student-grade gouache, meaning that it can’t be compared in quality to the other paints on this list. With that being said, it is a decent quality product for the price. It has a good lightfastness and the use of a natural vegetable binder is a nice selling point.
This gouache paint dries quickly to a matte finish with good adhesion to paper. The colors can be streaky at times, so it may take a bit more work to get an even wash than tube sets.
These paints are easy to activate, but nowhere near as opaque or pigmented as tubes. Because the pans require adding water, it is very difficult to add just enough water to activate the gouache without making it too transparent. If you want a truly opaque set, this may not be the one for you.
However, the convenience of pans in a tin is a great selling point. This tin is large and you get a generous amount of paint and 14 shades, which is better than most gouache sets.
Pros and Cons
Final Thoughts
This gouache set is perfect for both beginners and experienced artists alike who want a good range of colors in an easy-to-use format. This is an excellent set because it has all the colors you need as well as a white color which is not always included in other sets. The Caran d’Ache brand is known for its high-quality products, so you can trust that these paints will deliver great results.
5. Holbein Acryla Gouache Set – Best Acryla Gouache Set
Acryla gouache is different from standard or designer’s gouache because it uses a polymer binder like acrylic paint. This means that once the paint is dry, it’s permanent. It is a nice hybrid paint that is consistent and truly opaque.
Unpacking and First Impressions
This gouache set is a great option for artists who are looking to move away from traditional water-soluble paints. It has a high pigment concentration, which makes it easier to achieve the desired results without having to mix too many colors together. The acrylic binder allows these paints to be permanent and lightfast with excellent adhesion on various surfaces such as paper, canvas, or wood.
This set has larger tubes that are 20mL. However, since you may not be adding much water to your paint, if any, that means it may not last as long as other gouache paints. The colors included are what we are used to seeing in printing with cyan, magenta, yellow, black, and white.
This means that you can mix about any color you wish with the understanding of how those shades mix. However, beginners may find this more difficult than mixing standard primary colors and you will have to create your own reds.
Holbein also claims that the paints have a lower binder content than other brands of acryla gouache, which makes them easier to scrub off while wet or clean brushes thoroughly after use since you can get rid of all of the pigment from bristles without too much effort by using warm water and soap.
Since this brand has been around longer than most others in America, many art supply stores carry it as well. In addition, Holbein offers an extensive color chart online where you can get swatches and compare colors to see which set would be best for you.
This means that you can mix about any color you wish with the understanding of how those shades mix. However, beginners may find this more difficult than mixing standard primary colors and you will have to create your own reds.
Performance
The colors are vibrant and true to their names, which is a nice change from some gouache sets that have very unspecific color names. The paints cover well, but they can be a bit streaky at times so it takes some practice to get the hang of using them.
These paints are highly pigmented like acrylic paint but are thinner, smoother, and dry to a velvety matte finish, which is characteristic of gouache. However, once dry, the paint doesn’t budge and is water-resistant.
With that being said, it is a good idea to keep a spray mister on hand or to use a wet palette to keep these paints wet while in use. In dry or hot environments, your paint will dry quickly and be wasted. This is an extra step that some artists won’t enjoy but is necessary if you don’t want to waste your paint.
Pros and Cons
Final Thoughts
One of the best parts of acryla gouache is that it’s the same color wet as it is dry. With designer’s gouache, your light shades dry darker and dark shades dry lighter, meaning it’s very important to swatch your mixed shades. With this set, you know exactly what you’re getting and won’t have any surprises when it dries.
If you enjoy acrylic, but want to try something with watercolor characteristics that is opaque and permanent once dry, this may be a good choice for you. Also, it is worth noting that it claims to mix with water-soluble paints, but this is debatable.
Choosing the Best Gouache for You
Whether you are new to gouache or have been using gouache for years, you will find a paint set on this list to tickle your fancy. Each gouache is made from its own unique pigments and binders, making it vary from manufacturer to manufacturer.
Each has its own unique benefits and downsides, so be sure to understand exactly what you want in gouache before you shop. This will help you narrow down your choices and choose a product that will fulfill your needs.
I’ve been wondering about gouache for a while now. This really helps. I really want to try it out and now I have a good idea of what I need to purchase. Thanks!
Great! Another art supply that I need! Do you realize that I’m going to be in the doghouse when this package of gouache shows up at my door? LOL The wife is not going to be happy, but I will!
Are acryla gouache toxic?
Yes and no. Most of the colors marked as “Contain no materials in sufficient quantities to be toxic or injurious to humans” or “Any known health risks and with information on the safe and proper use of these materials.” But few colors (like Blue Violet) contains Formaldehyde that can be toxic in some ways.
Also, it depends on the manufacturer. E.g., Arteza paints are ACMI certified as non-toxic.
Gouache is awesome! I have been using white gouache for highlights on watercolor for a while, but have only been painting with gouache for a couple of months. I’m addicted! I’m gonna try some of these out!
I have never heard of gouache! It sounds like watercolor and acrylic had a baby and no one told me))) it might be fun. I’ve always had problems with watercolor because you start light and add dark. Maybe this would be a good choice for me since I like working dark to light. I know what my next art supply purchase will be.
The ARTEZA Gouache paint set really does give you a lot of bang for your buck! The other set I was looking at was $20 more and you get less paints in the set. I am going to order this one now. I wanted to find a good replacement that was budget-friendly for the paints I had that got dried out. I haven’t been painting in months and because they were left in the garage, the heat compromised them. Thanks for the recommendations!