There’s a particular category of art supplies that people either buy without hesitation or spend months talking themselves into. Schmincke Horadam watercolours sit firmly in that second category for most UK artists. The price is significantly higher than most alternatives. The question — the one I get asked more than almost any other about watercolour paints — is whether they’re worth it.
I spent nearly a decade as digital marketing manager at ARTdiscount, one of the UK’s largest online art retailers. I watched Schmincke sell consistently to a specific kind of buyer — usually someone who’d been painting for a few years, had tried Winsor & Newton Cotman, graduated to Winsor & Newton Professional or Daniel Smith, and was now considering whether Horadam justified the step up. I read the reviews, watched the sales data and spoke to enough artists about their paints to have a clear picture of what Schmincke Horadam actually delivers in practice.
I now run Discount Art Supplies — a price comparison platform used by 36,000 UK artists weekly — and we track Schmincke prices across all major UK retailers. If you want to find the best current UK price on Horadam before buying, check our Schmincke price comparison page first.
Here’s my honest verdict.
The History — Why It Matters
Schmincke has been producing fine artist colours in Düsseldorf, Germany since 1881. The company was founded by Josef Horadam and Hermann Schmincke — the Horadam name in the product title is a direct honour to the man who developed the formula. In 1892 Josef Horadam received the first ever patent for watercolours, placing Schmincke at the absolute forefront of watercolour technology at a pivotal moment in the medium’s history.
The company has been family owned since its founding — four generations of the Hesse family ran it until 1971 and it remains family-owned today. Through two World Wars, through enormous changes in the raw materials market, through the rise and fall of countless competitors, Schmincke has maintained the same fundamental commitment: finest artist colours with no compromise on quality.
In 2022 Schmincke Horadam AQUARELL was awarded Brand of the Century for the fourth time — the only watercolour brand to have received this designation. That’s not marketing. That’s 140 years of consistent product quality being recognised by the people who use it.
I mention the history because it’s genuinely relevant to the purchase decision. When you buy Horadam you’re not just buying a tube of watercolour paint. You’re buying into a manufacturing tradition that has been refined and protected for over a century. That matters more in paint than almost any other art supply category.
What Makes Horadam Different — The Technical Answer
There are several things Schmincke does with Horadam that most other manufacturers either can’t or won’t replicate.
The pan filling process is the most extraordinary. Each Horadam half and full pan is filled four times in liquid state, with several weeks of drying in a temperature-controlled chamber between each pour. The complete process takes three to five months per batch. This produces a pan with maximum pigment concentration and a precise level of residual moisture that makes the paint rewet instantly and consistently. No other manufacturer I’m aware of goes to this length. Most pan sets are filled once and dried. The difference in how the paint lifts with a wet brush is immediately noticeable.
The gum arabic Schmincke uses is Kordofan Gum Arabic from the dry zones south of the Sahara — one of the highest quality sources available globally. They test every batch on purchase and select only the best quality of each vintage. This isn’t a detail most buyers ever think about. It’s the detail that explains why Horadam flows differently to most competitors — slightly more controlled, slightly more precise, with a luminosity that comes from the quality of the binder as much as the pigment itself.
Ox gall is used sparingly as a dispersant — just enough to ensure pigment particles dissolve properly in water and to give the artist full control over colour movement, even on softer papers. Winsor & Newton Professional and Roman Szmal also use ox gall. It’s not vegan — worth knowing if that matters to you — but it produces paint behaviour that’s genuinely difficult to replicate without it.
Pigment load and lightfastness are where Horadam’s reputation is most solidly justified. Of the 139 colours in the standard range, 152 carry lightfastness ratings of four or five stars — the highest possible. 95 colours are single-pigment formulations, which means cleaner, more predictable mixing behaviour. Each colour has its own independently optimised recipe rather than a shared base formula. This is expensive to produce. It’s why Horadam costs what it costs.
How They Actually Paint
Technical credentials are one thing. How paints actually behave in use is what matters to the person at the easel. So here’s the practical picture.
The first thing most artists notice about Horadam is the colour intensity. Even dry in a pan, the colours have a depth and vibrancy that cheaper paints rarely match. No chalkiness. No dullness. Just concentrated pigment that looks alive before you’ve even touched it with water. The moment you rewet a pan that’s been dry for weeks or months — it comes back instantly, fully, with no loss of intensity or flow. That rewetting reliability is genuinely exceptional and one of the most practically useful things about the range for artists who don’t paint every day.
The flow is controlled without being stiff. Horadam stays where you put it on most papers, which is a significant advantage for detailed work and wet-on-wet techniques where you want predictable colour movement rather than unpredictable bloom. The ox gall addition contributes to this — the paint behaves obediently in a way that gives you confidence mid-session.
Granulation in the range varies significantly by colour. Most Horadam colours are non-granulating with even paint flow. Twenty-two colours granulate — these are marked with a G on the tube — and Schmincke have also released a Supergranulating range with themed sets that produce dramatic texture and colour separation effects. The granulating colours in particular — Mahogany Brown, the various earth tones, some of the cobalts — are among the most characterful paints I’ve encountered in any range.
Mixing behaviour reflects the single-pigment formulation. Clean, predictable, consistent. Two single-pigment Horadam colours mixed together behave the way colour theory says they should. That sounds like a low bar but it isn’t — a lot of paints with complex pigment mixtures produce muddy or unexpected results when combined. With Horadam you can trust the colour wheel.
The Horadam Supergranulating Range
Worth a specific mention because it’s one of the most distinctive and talked-about developments Schmincke has made in recent years. The Supergranulating colours — released in themed sets including Glacier, Forest, Desert, Deep Sea and others — are formulated to produce not just granulation but dramatic colour separation when applied to paper. Two pigments that would normally blend produce visible teal and pink, or blue and orange, separating as they dry to create textural effects that genuinely can’t be replicated by mixing conventional paints.
The term “Supergranulating” caused some confusion when Jackson’s Art first started stocking them — some artists expected unusually strong granulation rather than the colour separation effect Schmincke intended. It’s worth understanding what you’re buying: these are paints designed for artists who want dramatic textural landscape effects, not simply heavier granulation than usual. Used for the right subject matter — water, skies, geological textures, atmospheric landscapes — they’re extraordinary. Used expecting conventional behaviour, they’ll surprise you.
The first 40 Supergranulating colours have been added to the permanent Schmincke line, so they’re not limited to sets anymore. Individual tubes and pans are available and worth exploring if texture and granulation are part of your watercolour practice.
Horadam vs The Competition
The honest comparison most UK artists are making when they consider Horadam is against Winsor & Newton Professional and Daniel Smith. All three are professional grade. All three are significantly more expensive than student and mid-range paints. Here’s how they differ in practice.
Horadam vs Winsor & Newton Professional: Both are excellent. W&N Professional has a longer established presence in the UK market and the Series 7 kolinsky brush association makes it feel like the default professional watercolour choice. Horadam has higher overall pigment concentration and the pan filling process gives it a slight edge in rewetting consistency. W&N Professional has a slightly wider colour range at similarly accessible price points. Both are worth using — this is a preference decision more than a quality one.
Horadam vs Daniel Smith: Daniel Smith’s Primatek range — using genuine mineral pigments — gives it colours that Schmincke simply doesn’t offer. Sleeping Beauty Turquoise, Piemontite Genuine, Lunar Black — these are genuinely unique. For artists who want unusual, natural-mineral pigment paints, Daniel Smith has an edge in that specific niche. For the core professional watercolour range — consistency, lightfastness, flow, rewetting — Horadam is arguably the more rigorously manufactured product.
For the complete picture on professional oil paints if you also work in other media, see our guide to the best professional oil paints worth the money.
Who Should Buy Schmincke Horadam?
I watched the Schmincke buyer at ARTdiscount for nearly a decade. The pattern was consistent. Horadam is bought by:
- Watercolour painters who have been painting seriously for at least a year and have outgrown mid-range paints
- Artists who sell or exhibit work and need guaranteed lightfastness in their paintings
- Painters who work primarily in pan sets and value the rewetting reliability
- Artists who care about precise colour mixing and want single-pigment formulations they can trust
- Anyone who paints landscapes and wants to explore granulation and texture effects
Horadam is probably not the right first watercolour paint. If you’re new to watercolour, the performance advantage over a good mid-range paint like Winsor & Newton Cotman won’t be immediately apparent and the price difference will sting. Start with Cotman, learn the medium, and let the upgrade to Horadam be a reward for the point when you can actually feel the difference.
My children are years away from needing Horadam. But when the day comes that either of them is painting seriously enough to justify it, I’ll know exactly which paints to buy them.
UK Pricing and Where to Buy
Schmincke Horadam is premium priced — there’s no way to dress that up. Individual 5ml tubes typically range from £5.50 to £12+ depending on the colour series, with some special and limited edition colours higher still. Half pans run from around £4.50 to £9+ each.
The price varies more significantly across UK retailers than you might expect. Jackson’s Art, Cass Art, Crafty Arts and Amazon all stock Horadam and the price difference on individual colours can be £2-3 per tube — which adds up quickly across a full palette purchase.
We compare Schmincke Horadam prices across all major UK retailers in real time. Find the best current UK price on Schmincke Horadam here — and keep an eye on our paints and mediums deals page for any current sales or discounts across the range.
The Honest Verdict
Yes. Schmincke Horadam watercolours are worth the premium price — for the right artist at the right stage of their practice.
The manufacturing process is genuinely more rigorous than any competitor. The pigment quality and lightfastness credentials are impeccable. The rewetting consistency from pans is the best I’ve encountered. The colour mixing behaviour from single-pigment formulations is clean and predictable. These are not marginal improvements over cheaper paints. They are meaningful, noticeable differences that a developing watercolour artist will feel in their work.
The question isn’t whether Horadam is good. It demonstrably is. The question is whether you’re at a stage where the difference between Horadam and a good mid-range paint is something you’ll actually notice and benefit from. If you are — buy them without hesitation. If you’re not quite there yet — buy something better than you currently have, keep painting, and come back to this review in a year.
The price is real. So is the quality.
