Acrylic Paint Color Names

By Stephen Bucaro

Oil and water color paints have been used by artists for hundreds of years. Oil paint has the advantages of high color intensity, opacity and long drying time. But oil paints are expensive and clean up is difficult. requiring toxic chemicals. Water color paints have the advantages of being low cost, easy to use, and easy to clean up. But water color paints can fade if kept in bright light, and some artists can't deal with it's transparency.

Acrylic paints have the advantage of low cost relative to oil paints and yet still have high color intensity and opacity. They can be made transparent like water paint, and they can be cleaned up with water, and yet are water resistant when dry. The disadvantage of acrylic paint is it's fast drying time doesn't give the artist much time to make modifications or fix errors.

For these reasons many artists have found acrylic paint to be their medium of choice. There are a huge number of different acrylic paint colors available. There is no standard for color names, each brand has its own system of paint color names. This can be vedry confusing.

Grumbacher is an American company that has been setting the highest standards for quality artist materials since since 1905. Grumbacher was acquired by Chartpak, Inc. in 2006 and they are committed to adhering to the high quality standards set by Grumbacher. Therefore, about the closest thing we have to a color name standard are the color names used by the Grumbacher company, which are presented below.

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