Sennelier is a French brand of professional art supplies established in 1887 in Paris. The brand has been offering watercolors since 1893. Their paints are still produced in France with traditional methods. Their watercolors use a binder of gum arabic and honey, meant to give brilliance and smoothness to the paint and making them easy to rewet.
They sell tube paints (offered as 10 ml and 21 ml) and full or half pans, using different formulations for the two. For the tube paints, this means they stay soft for a long time and, depending on climate to a certain degree, might never fully dry at all.
For Sennelier ‘L’Aquarelle’, their artist quality line, they offer 110 colors. About half of those are single pigment paints, the rest are a comparatively wide range of convenience mixes. Additionally, they offer twelve iridescent colors. ‘La Petite Aquarelle ‘ is their student grade line with 24 colors. Paints are available online worldwide, via Amazon, Dick Blick, and Jackson’s.
Our hot takes and favorite colors
Lynne
The first time I used Sennelier paints was on a trip to Paris in June of 2025. Despite knowing that I was there for only a brief stay, and had a plan to visit the Sennelier shop I’d heard so much about, I still included a fairly substantial palette of my usual brands in my sketching kit. It never got touched. I visited the shop on Quai Voltaire (a must see for artists if you are ever there), purchased a travel palette of 12 half pans, and promptly walked out into the nearby bridge crossing the Seine to sketch. I was sold. Every color was creamy, rewet easily, and made beautiful marks on the page. And, despite containing honey, the pans dry solidly, making them perfect for travel. Since then I’ve added to my half pan collection and also purchased tubes to compare the experience with each. So far I have found that the tubes dry firmly enough that I will try traveling with them soon to see how that goes.
Favorite Colors:
- Turquoise Green (PG50) is a favorite in my palettes. This one is a bright greener leaning shade with lovely, smooth granulation. I use it in skies, water, and to mix bright spring greens and lavender. It’s a bit more opaque than the DS Cobalt Teal Blue I often use, which can be helpful for flowers and leaves.
- Sennelier Blue (PB15:6) is the Phthalo Blue red shade that won me over to this color. It’s a rich, bold blue that gets very dark, which not all brands do, and it seems to have less of a drying shift than others. It can be warmed up easily with magenta and cooled with yellow or green, and mixes perfect darks with burnt umber. As a result, it works perfectly as the only blue in a limited palette.
- Chinese Orange (PR209, PBr23, PY150) is a color I am surprised at how much I like, both because it’s orange and because it’s a three-pigment hue. I’ve tried many oranges over the years, usually sticking to single pigments, and none of them have “stuck” for me. This is a middle orange that makes a great mixer for golden yellows, rich olive greens, and luscious browns as well as a bright red with PR122. It has a metallic glow from the Quin and Nickel pigments it contains, which I love.
Colors I Avoid:
With the exception of Caput Mortuum, I find most of the earths a challenge, at least in pans. They are harder to rewet and have little to no granulation. The hues of burnt sienna, raw and burnt umber are all nice, but it takes a lot of patience to get enough pigment from them. I will be trying tubes when I finish the pans I have, since the formulation of the tubes is such that they remain moist and that should make it easier to get the saturation I seek.
Svenja
Sennelier might not be my favorite brand, but I enjoy their paints for being easy to rewet and smooth to paint with. The stickiness is not something that bothers me personally as long as I do not attempt to fill the tube paints into my travel palette. (Even that works to a degree, if I do not fill the pans completely and give them a lot of time to dry.) For the purpose of travel, their pre-poured half pans work perfectly well for me in European climates.
Poured into full pans for my studio palette the tube paints remain a bit sticky but are perfectly usable.
I particularly enjoy the dispersiveness of these paints – not as extreme as QoR, but they are nevertheless pretty mobile on the page. I also really enjoy the design of the brand (their tubes are pretty!), and I will admit to being a little bit enchanted by the history of the brand as well. I cannot resist visiting the Sennelier shop when in Paris and picking up an art supply or two simply to feel myself connected to the long tradition of the brand and the artists who have used it.
Here in Germany, the bigger tubes are occasionally on sale and being offered for the same price as their smaller tubes, and full pans offered for the price of half pans. At that price they are definitely a great offer!
Favorites:
- Neutral Tint: mixed from PB60, PBk7, PR209 this is my go-to ‘black’ hue if I am too lazy to mix one myself. It is slightly purple leaning and very pleasing to me.
- Brown Green (PY129): Very luminous and my favorite version of this pigment! Great as a basis for mixing yellows for greenery and very nice in itself for the most yellowy parts of plants and trees.
- Blue Sennelier (PB 15:6): It is just so bright and pretty!
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