How many colours you actually need

5 min read · written in the studio

The honest answer is fewer than the shelf suggests, and the useful answer depends on whether you mix or reach. Both habits are fine. They just want different boxes.

The case for a short palette

A palette of twelve or eighteen forces you to mix, and mixing is what makes a painting hang together. Every colour on the page shares a parent, so the greys agree with the greens without you planning it. Painters who work this way tend to keep one small box for years and buy refills rather than new sets.

We mill 9 sets at eighteen shades or fewer, which is where most people start.

Where a wide box earns its space

Reaching beats mixing when the clock is the constraint. Illustration deadlines, teaching a room of twenty, colour matching against a brief: in all three you want the shade already sitting there. The tradeoff is desk space and the discipline of keeping forty wells clean.

4 sets in the range carry more than forty eight shades, and 15 sit in the middle band.

Every palette size in the current range
Shades in the box	Sets we mill	What it suits
6	1	Mixing practice and a tight, deliberate palette.
12	3	Mixing practice and a tight, deliberate palette.
18	5	A sketchbook palette you can carry and still mix from.
24	6	A sketchbook palette you can carry and still mix from.
36	6	The working middle: enough greys and greens to skip mixing.
48	3	The working middle: enough greys and greens to skip mixing.
56	1	A studio desk where you reach rather than mix.
72	2	A studio desk where you reach rather than mix.
112	1	A studio desk where you reach rather than mix.

Twin Cup changes the arithmetic

The usual reason to refuse a wide palette is footprint. Twin Cup halves each well to twelve grams and puts two shades in the space of one, so a box that would have needed a desk fits a bag instead. You give up depth per colour, which matters if you cover large areas and does not matter at all in a sketchbook.

A rough rule

Learning to mix, or working in one consistent key: twelve to eighteen.
Sketchbook work away from the desk: eighteen to twenty four in a Twin Cup box.
Illustration under a deadline: thirty six to forty eight.
Teaching, or matching to a brief: fifty six and up.

If you are between two sizes, take the smaller one and a bottle of white. White empties first in every studio we have ever seen, and it is the shade a short palette burns through fastest.