Daniel Smith Artist Oil Colours

See and Feel the Difference

When you buy our professional quality Original Oils, you get exceptionally strong pigmentation, uniform buttery consistency and excellent value. For more than 20 years, we’ve been innovators in pigment selection and formulation, and we still make and package each batch by hand, with the utmost integrity and attention to detail. Choose from a palette of 182 colors, many of which are unusual and unique to DANIEL SMITH.

The DANIEL SMITH Difference

Innovation
Introduced in 1989, our Original Oils showed the results of years of development. Our intent was to offer a game-changing paint with remarkable color strength, reliable lightfastness and consistent texture. Over the years we’ve expanded the line to include a vast array of colors derived from the world’s finest pigments, from the ancient natural minerals used in our PrimaTek colors, to the lab-created modern pigments in our Quinacridones and Luminescents.

Small Batch Production
Our manufacturing crew makes our Original Oils in a department right next to our Seattle Store. Visitors are often surprised to see just how simple and traditional the process is, and how closely involved the paintmakers are with every step of production. Batches are small, allowing close control of every factor involved.

Choice Ingredients
Great paint starts with great ingredients. We buy pure pigments from sources around the globe. The high grade of alkali-refined linseed oil we use is selected for its uniformity, light color, low acid value, low-yellowing properties and good adhesion.

Careful Formulation
Color strength and lightfastness are hallmarks of our paints. Each color was carefully formulated by our chemist and tested against similar colors in competitors’ lines. For each color, we select the perfect grind to yield particle sizes that maximize the qualities inherent in the pigment, and we balance maximum pigment load with minimum vehicle content. We include a small proportion of additives, less than 1% by weight, to improve brushability and consistency, modify drying time and improve the grind.

Verifiable Lightfastness
We test our paints by placing samples in a Xenon Fadeometer which exposes paint to the equivalent of 100 years of sunlight in ten days. Artists can rely on all but three of our colors to remain virtually unchanged for over a century.

Informative Labels
Each tube or can of DANIEL SMITH Original Oils is filled and labeled by hand. Labels give complete information including the common pigment names, color index names and numbers and ASTM lightfastness ratings. 165 colors carry the AP Approved Product Seal from the Art & Creative Materials Institute, meaning they are quite safe to use.

If you haven’t tried DANIEL SMITH Original Oils yet, we know you’ll be impressed.

And if you’re already using them, we want to say thank you for choosing our top quality American-made paint.