How do you organise your paints?

[Cactus]

Unpacking my paints into their new racks got me thinking about how to sort them. Assuming you don't just throw all your paint pots into a bucket how do you sort them? By colour, manufacturer, type, size of bottle, alphabetical order or something even weirder?

[Mazer Rackham]

By disappointment.

 

I have a lot of Vallejo/P3/Coat D'Arms paints so arrange them by number and colour group.

[Firedrake Cordova]

I have old biscuit tins (specifically McVities Victoria) with my paints in. I have one for Vallejo Game Colour, one for new Citadel, one for 1990s Citadel, one for Formula P3, and one for oddities (Metal Colour & DarkStar Molten Metals). 

 

Within each tin, the paints are organised according to their number where there is one, or colour where there isn't.

[Grotsmasha]

I only have Citadel, but by colour.

[andes]

I'm migrating to AK paints exclusively. I keep them on acrylic nail polish racks (the stair-stepped ones) on my painting desk, organized by AK part number (thus by color for the most part) -- there are a few paints I use all the time so I keep them grouped together, near at hand.

Edited July 25, 2023 by andes

[Xenith]

I have a small 4 drawer thing that goes under my table. Originally I had them divided into:

1. Colours
2. Blacks, whites and greys
3. Washes and Contrasts
4. technicals

However obviously there are many more colours than others, so it's evolved into:

 

1. colours
2. black, white, greys, browns/creams, fleshtones
3. washes and contrasts
4. technicals and metallics. 

[tychobi]

I use 1 large bin about 6 inches deep in paint pots n tubes from a wide variety of brands. I stir it every few days to avoid settling usually by digging through it.  I enjoy chaos 

[Bung]

First by medium

Alcohol, oil or waterbased then group by metallic - non-metallic, then by color hue.

 

Exception are a handfull of colors i use in nearly any modell like Vallejo Ivory and DARK Sea Blue for example.

[Cleon]

I wish I could say I did sort them.... All I actually have is a three step set. one pot with all my unopened paints in, one drawer with most of my open paints in and then a biscuit tin with the paints my current project are using in.

[Helias_Tancred]

Manufacturer and color, in plastic fish tackle boxes (Flambeaux) from Walmart. 

 

All my GW are together. All of my Vallejo are together, ditto for my Army Painter stuff. 

Edited July 26, 2023 by Eilio Tiberius

[Agramar_The_Luna_Wolf]

 By colors and company, separate in boxes.

[sbarnby71]

By how often I use a colour (it works for me!)

 

Wraithbone

Grey Seer

Fenrisian Grey

Agrax Earthshade

Nuln Oil

Lahmian Medium

Red

Yellow

Green

[LittlePlasticHomies]

Loose clustering of colors and setting those clusters by other paints that are used together (example red touches orange, white touches black).

 

Metallics are their own separate mound and inks are shoved off to the side. 

[nilsh]

I have two (quite) old wooden, two compartment antique cutlery trays with handles that I use for the main part of my paints. One for my Scale75 Artist paint tube's and a couple of paint bottles. And the second one has most of my oil paints and some accessories. Then there's two 4L RUB boxes with what's left of my paint bottles, and they hardly see any use atm.

[Emperor Ming]

After 20 years in the hobby, I gave up on organisation

 

There are paints in the downstairs cupboard, upstairs, in random shoe boxes

 

Not to mention the garage 

[crimsondave]

Pots (citadel) and droppers (everything else) then by color.  I have 2 racks for pots and a big one for droppers.

[Marshal Reinhard]

I don't understand the question. It was clearly english language but it makes no sense to me.

 

[Knightsword]

I gave up on organising them long ago and instead play whack-a-mole from a box trying to find the colour I actually want 

[Bouargh]

By colour. And by frequency of use. The more I use it the less accessible.

But as the rack is too small, I also have the shoebox system. It is so efficient for spare pots managment... like this you order the paint you though you need while it was in the bottom of the shoebox.

[PHS]

It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to organise anything, paints are the least of my worries

i think I’ve got whatever the opposite of OCD is

[Lord_Ikka]

I have three drawers I use to store stuff (I use Reaper and Citadel paints in the main, with a few specific paints from other manufacturers)-

Main drawer has all my commonly used paints: those that are needed for all my main armies' paint schemes or those that are good utility paints (generally browns/metals)

Second drawer has all the other paints; those that are used rarely or that I bought but haven't tested out yet.

Third drawer has all of my replacement paints; the common paints I use and run out of so often that I keep multiple extras of, mainly stuff like my basing paints, nuln oil/other washes, certain metallics, and a few really common reds/greens that I often use for airbrushing basecoats.

[Halandaar]

I have a main rack which is sorted by colour (ish), but then I pull out the colours I'm using repeatedly during any given project into a separate box, and then swap those out when I move on to a new thing.

[Arkhanist]

Whatever nice organisation scheme I ever end up arranging my paints into, it usually descends into near madness in short order...

 

I've one rack of Contrast, one rack of pro-acryl (they've effectively replaced citadel base paints for me), one rack of citadel layers, one rack of air paints in droppers, and one rack of miscellanous in droppers. I then have a toolbox which holds my non-standard bottles; vallejo metal color, inks, flory clay weathering washes etc. Certain key paints like white, black and mediums never leave my painting tray.

 

I also have a big box of rarely used paints stored elsewhere; I find it *really* hard to throw old paints away. I need to purge some more from my miscellaneous rack (like my army painter paints that I hardly ever use) into there so I can decant a bunch of layer paints into droppers!

 

Organising by colour kinda works, but I don't get too picky about it as I tend to accumulate paints from my current project in a huddle on my desk. Organising alphabetically breaks as soon as you buy a new paint and realise you have to shuffle half a rack over to accomodate it.

[Bryan Blaire]

All of my colors are organized similar to the rainbow, and then browns, whites, greys, and blacks, then finally the “flesh tones” of all varieties from pale to dark.  I’ve also got the odd colors at the end, but almost everything fits relatively easily.  I have a separate rack for all my metallics, which are organized from lightest to darkest of silvers, golds, coppers, bronzes, and brass, then to the colored metallics, again by the rainbow.  Contrasts, shades, and tints all sit on the tops of spinning racks or in very small racks of their own.

[nilsh]

2 hours ago, Bryan Blaire said:

All of my colors are organized similar to the rainbow, and then browns, whites, greys, and blacks, then finally the “flesh tones” of all varieties from pale to dark.  I’ve also got the odd colors at the end, but almost everything fits relatively easily.  I have a separate rack for all my metallics, which are organized from lightest to darkest of silvers, golds, coppers, bronzes, and brass, then to the colored metallics, again by the rainbow.  Contrasts, shades, and tints all sit on the tops of spinning racks or in very small racks of their own.

 

I used to have it set up like that when I had a dedicated hobby space but two moves later, I'm working at the living room table lol.