How many alcohol marker colours do you actually need?

Alcohol marker sets are sold by colour count, and the counts climb a long way: our TOUCH range alone runs 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 80, 120, 168, 204 and 262. That makes the first purchase feel like a guess. It is not. The honest answer depends on one question: do you intend to blend?

If you are not blending, 12 to 24 is enough

A small set gives you one of each colour family and little else. That is genuinely fine for casual colouring, for children, and for finding out whether you enjoy markers before spending more. What it cannot do is shade: with one blue, there is nothing to blend the blue into. In our range that is the 12-colour set or the 24-colour set.

Blending starts working at 36 to 60

This is the range where a set begins carrying two or three tones of the same hue — a pale, a mid and a deep of one blue — and blending stops being theory. If you want to shade a face, a fold of fabric or a sky, this is the realistic entry point. See the 36-colour set and the 60-colour set. The 60 is also where the skin and flesh range opens up properly, with the greys behind it for shadow, which is what makes portrait and character work possible.

80 to 120 is where regular colourists settle

Full tonal families. You stop compromising on skin tones, greys and greens, because every family has enough steps in it to model form rather than just fill it. Most people who colour every week end up here: the 80-colour set or the 120-colour set.

168 and above is a working palette, not a set

Worth it if you draw daily or professionally; overkill otherwise. We run to 168, 204 and 262 colours. The steps between shades get small enough that a gradient reads as continuous.

The one rule about money

Every set page shows its price per marker, and it falls as the set grows. So if you are choosing between a bigger set and a smaller set plus a top-up later, the bigger set is usually the better buy: filling gaps one marker at a time costs far more per colour than buying the family in the first place. That is the whole reason to decide the count carefully now rather than upgrade in stages.

What is the same in every set

Every TOUCH marker is twin-tipped: a broad chisel nib at one end for filling and blending, a fine bullet nib at the other for lines and detail. Caps are moulded in the colour of the ink and printed with the colour code and name, so a set stays quick to work from once the markers are loose on a desk. Larger sets come in a zipped case.

Before you decide, two things to know

Alcohol ink bleeds through ordinary paper — use a backing sheet, and prefer paper meant for markers. And the fastest way to see how any new set really blends is a page with large open shapes; a busy page hides streaking that a plain one reveals. Our bold and easy colouring books are built exactly that way. For the wider decision — alcohol or acrylic, which paper, which canvas — the buying guide covers every range we stock.