Would YOU pay 4x the Price for These Paints?

Hi friends! Today I got a chance to try out a student and artist line of paints from the same company. I wondered how different the quality would be between a student line of paints LUKAS Studio Aquarelle and the artist grade LUKAS 1862 that costs 4 times as much. See for yourself in today’s video review:

Video!

Here you can see the dry color chart:

Please note: I was not asked or compensated by Lukas or Jerry’s Artarama to post this review. These findings and opinions are my own.

I am comparing the Lukas Aquarelle Studio set of 12 with the LUKAS 1862 artist grade set of 12 half pans:

Price: (12 half pan travel sets)
LUKAS Studio retail: $23.05 (Sale $11.99)
LUKAS 1862 retail: $87.50 (sale: $42.29)

I found both sets of paint comparable. I decided to investigate their lightfastness and both lines of paint had excellent or very good lightfast ratings on their paints. I will post links to the LUKAS info with light-fast/transparency/pigment compisition info below. Please note they use a sale of ***=excellent and **=very lightfast (which if you were there for out thrilling lightfast discussion during last Fridays live stream you would know that equals an American rating of 1-excellent or 2-very good or a 7/8-excellent or 5/6-very good on the British blue wool scale)

Would it be to much to ask for paint companies to adhere to one set of lightfast ratings?

The major difference between the lines is the 1862 has more colors. Also I reckon that the studio line must have more fillers to justify the price difference and I did see a bit more chalkiness on the black on some of the studio colors (magenta, viridian, cad yellow, cad red) but honestly not a lot. Also some of the colors between the sets were a bit different so maybe lesser expensive pigments were used on the studio version, for instance the 1862 lines uses real cadmium pigments in cad. red and cad. yellow but those colors in the studio line are hues (synthetic replications of the pigments.) It does not worry me though with the high lightfast ratings. Upon further investigating I found that both the studio ad the 1862 lines use the same pigments except for the cadmium colors but the pigments used in the hues are the same as the pigments in permanent red and permanent yellow light in the 1862 line respectively.

Both of the LUKAS sets were more opaque than I prefer in a watercolor paint. If you look at the color charts I linked below you will see that few of the colors claim to be a truly transparent color, come are semi transparent, semi-opaque and opaque. You might prefer this, it is personal preference but I generally like a very transparent watercolor. Still, these are a great buy and the next time I need to order watercolors for a class I will buy the studio sets without hesitation.

Reference sheets: LUKAS Studio and Lukas 1862 Artists watercolor have a look and compare the pigments and quality of the paints. Learn to be a paint detective and you will always know what you are buying!

So, what would you buy? Would you get the studio set knowing that the colors are lightfast and strong or would you pay 4 times the price for the artist version? Or would you skip these paints all together? Let me know in the comments below and til next time happy crafting!