7 Best Colored Pencils of 2026 — Wax vs Oil, Ranked

Prismacolor Premier is the pencil the medium was built around. The soft wax core carries an unusually heavy pigment load, which is why a single layer covers where other brands need three, and why burnishing a Prismacolor drawing produces a surface with no visible tooth left at all.

The 72-count is the honest sweet spot. The 24 and 48 sets leave real gaps in the mid-tones; the 132 and 150 sets mostly add colors you can mix yourself, at a meaningful jump in price. At 72 you have full coverage of the wheel plus the greys and earth tones that portrait and landscape work actually consume.

Polychromos is what a colored pencil looks like when the design priority is control rather than coverage. The oil binder produces a firmer core that takes a long, fine point and keeps it through sustained drawing — the practical difference is that you sharpen a fraction as often, which matters enormously in detail work.

The 36 tin is the right entry point rather than the 12 or the 24 — it covers the wheel with enough greys and earths to work without immediately hitting gaps. Step up to the 60 or 120 only once you know which families you actually exhaust.

Luminance is the answer to a specific question: what if a colored pencil had to last? Caran d'Ache built the line around permanent pigments first and let everything else follow, which is the reverse of how most ranges are formulated.

What makes it remarkable rather than merely expensive is that permanence usually costs you handling quality, and here it doesn't. The core is soft, blends readily, and burnishes to a full-coverage surface — you are not trading away the things that make colored pencil enjoyable.

Derwent Lightfast exists because Luminance proved there was a market for permanence and not everyone could pay Swiss prices. Derwent built an oil-core line around rated pigments and landed at roughly half the cost per pencil.

Buy the 24 to test whether the handling suits you, then fill gaps from open stock rather than buying a second tin. The greens in particular are thin at this count, which matters if you draw landscape or botanical subjects.

The case for a small artist-grade set over a large student-grade one is simple: student pencils teach you bad habits. Low pigment loads mean color that won't layer, blends that go muddy, and a conclusion that you're bad at colored pencil when really the tool was.

Most watercolor pencils are a compromise in both directions — mediocre dry, streaky wet. Supracolor isn't. Dry, it behaves like a decent soft colored pencil. Wet, the core dissolves completely and evenly, with none of the half-activated grain that cheaper water-soluble pencils leave behind.

Pablo is the pencil for people who like how Polychromos draws but want Caran d'Ache's manufacturing consistency. Cores are reliably centered, breakage is rare, and the point holds through long detail passages.