Acrylic paint: tubes, pots or bottles — which should you buy first?

Buy a tube set first. A set of tubes gives you enough of each colour to work through several paintings, stores in a drawer, and costs less than assembling the same colours one at a time. Buy a single large bottle second — almost always white, because it is the colour every painting uses most. Buy pots if you are painting with children or getting through colour quickly, because a wide opening is easier to load a brush from than a narrow neck.

Why does the container matter?

Because it decides how much paint you put out and how fast you use it. A tube dispenses a controlled amount and seals cleanly, so colour lasts. A pot invites a loaded brush straight in, which is faster and messier and suits bold work and small hands. A bottle is for volume — a colour you already know you go through — and pouring from it is the only sensible way to cover a large canvas or mix a big batch of one tone.

Which tube set?

Two options in the range. The 12 ml tubes, 12 colours is the smallest sensible starting kit: every colour family, small enough to try acrylic without committing. The 35 ml tubes come in 12 or 24 colours and are the set to buy if you already know you will keep painting — three times the paint per colour, and the 24 adds the in-between shades that save you mixing.

When are pots the right choice?

Children, classrooms, and anyone who paints in bold flat areas rather than fine detail. The 25 ml pots, 6 colours set gives six colours in a format a brush can go straight into. Pots dry out faster than tubes once opened, so they suit people who use paint up rather than store it.

When do you need a bottle?

When one colour is doing most of the work. The single-colour bottles come in 100, 250 and 500 ml across twelve colours. White first — for mixing tints, for grounds, for highlights, for correcting — and then whichever hue your paintings keep returning to. Buying that colour by the bottle and everything else by the tube is how most regular painters end up organised.

What surface and brushes?

Acrylic goes on canvas, board and heavy paper. For a first canvas, what size canvas should a beginner buy walks through the sizes; the acrylic pad — 250 or 300 GSM — is the paper made for it. Brushes decide more about the result than the paint does: a round, a flat and a filbert from the brush sets cover almost everything, and the bare-wood palettes take the shine off a colour as you mix, which is closer to how it will look once dry.

Anything to know about clean-up?

Everything here thins with water and cleans up with water. No solvents, no ventilation requirements, nothing that makes a kitchen table an unreasonable place to paint. Rinse brushes before the paint dries in them — dry acrylic does not come out.

Short version

• First: a tube set (12 ml to try it, 35 ml to keep going).
• Second: a big bottle of white.
• Pots for children and bold, fast work.
• Bottles for the one or two colours you use most.