Wet Palette Guide - Why You Need One (2026)

A wet palette is the single highest-value upgrade most painters can buy. It keeps your paint thinned and workable for hours instead of minutes, which improves your consistency, saves a surprising amount of wasted paint, and is close to essential for techniques like wet blending.

What it is

A wet palette is a shallow, sealed tray with a layer of water, a sponge or foam, and a sheet of special parchment on top. Water wicks up through the parchment and keeps your paint moist from below, so it stays at the perfect milk-like consistency rather than drying into a skin on a dry palette.

Why it matters

• Paint stays workable for hours - thin once and keep painting.
• Built-in thinning - paint picks up just enough moisture to flow well. See how to thin your paints.
• Less waste - a sealed wet palette keeps paint usable to the next session.
• Enables blending - smooth transitions need paint that stays wet on the model and the palette.

Buy or make your own

• Ready-made - the Redgrass Games Everlasting palette and the Army Painter wet palette are the popular picks, with good seals and replacement parchment.
• DIY - a flat sealable container, a kitchen sponge or a few sheets of folded paper towel, and baking/greaseproof parchment paper. It costs almost nothing and works nearly as well.

Tips

• Don't over-soak the sponge - the parchment should be damp, not flooded, or paint pools and runs.
• Use the right parchment - genuine wet-palette paper or baking parchment; printer paper disintegrates.
• Seal it between sessions to keep the paint alive for days.