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.
Some makers - Redgrass above all - swap the disposable sheet for a reusable membrane you rinse and use again. The principle is identical; only the running cost changes.
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.
What to buy
Almost any sealed palette works. What actually separates them is how well the lid seals overnight and whether you can reliably get hold of the refills - so buy the palette on its seal and the refills on price per sheet. Every wet palette we have checked sits on the wet palettes shelf, priced across every shop we track.
- The default pick. The Army Painter Wet Palette is the one most wargamers end up owning: a sealed case with fifty hydro sheets and two foams in the box, stocked almost everywhere, which keeps the price honest. The Wargamers Edition is the larger version with a hard 30-well insert for Speedpaints and washes - worth it if you use a lot of contrast-style paint, unnecessary if you don't.
- The enthusiast pick. Redgrass Games turned the wet palette into a system rather than a box. The Painter Lite is the accessible one and by far the easiest to find; the Painter V2 is the flagship, with a different lid and locking system - a genuinely different product rather than a bigger Lite. Redgrass sell both under the Everlasting name, which is where most of the naming confusion comes from.
- The value picks. Green Stuff World's Acrylic Wet Palette ships as a tray with a lid, fifty sheets of semi-permeable paper, two treated sponges and a closing band, over a 182x132mm working area. Their Ultimate Wet Palette is the other GSW option, and both come in an XL size (Acrylic XL, Ultimate XL) if you mix a lot of colours at once.
- Also worth knowing. AK Interactive's wet palette is the scale-modelling equivalent, with its own paper and sponge wipes. The Chronicle RPG modular palette is a sealed modular tray that also comes in maroon and purple.
Every one of those pages compares what the shops we track are charging right now, including up to five Amazon stores - UK, US, Germany, Canada and Australia - wherever a listing has been read and checked. Buy from the comparison rather than the first listing you see; the spread on the same palette is wider than it has any right to be.
Sealed wet palette, Painter V2
Redgrass Games
Sealed wet palette, 182x132mm work area, tray with lid
Green Stuff World
The running cost nobody mentions
The palette is a one-off purchase. The paper is not, and over a couple of years the refills cost more than the tray did.
- Army Painter - the Hydro Pack is fifty sheets and two foams; the Hydro Bundle pairs the palette itself with four foams and a hundred sheets if you would rather buy the lot in one go. There is a Wargamers Edition pack for the larger tray.
- Green Stuff World - Hydro Paper x50 and Hydro Foams x2, with XL paper and XL foams for the big tray.
- AK Interactive - wet palette paper in forties, plus sponge wipes.
- Redgrass - hydration paper for the Painter and for the Studio XL, or the reusable membranes - fifteen sheets you rinse and use again instead of binning, which is the only real answer to the running cost anyone sells. Foam perishes as well: there is replacement foam for the Painter V2 and for the Studio range.
Sheet sizes are not interchangeable between makers, and frequently not between one maker's own standard and XL trays. Check the size on the pack against the size of your palette before ordering, because a pack that doesn't fit is a pack you will cut down badly every session.
15 reusable membranes for the Painter V2 wet palette
Redgrass Games
40 replacement hydration papers for the AK wet palette
AK Interactive
A few small extras are genuinely useful once you have lived with a palette: Redgrass's Wavy insert doubles as a mixing well and a brush rest, their anti-spill pot holder saves the shade you were about to knock over, and Green Stuff World's elastic band keeps a palette shut in a bag on the way to a club night.
Mixing and brush-rest insert for the Redgrass Painter palettes
Redgrass Games
Clip-on pot holder for the Redgrass wet palette, stops shades and inks spilling
Redgrass Games
Elastic band that holds a wet palette shut in transit
Green Stuff World
Make your own
The DIY palette is not a compromise you should feel bad about - it works, and it is how a lot of very good painters still do it.
- A flat sealable container - a sandwich box will do.
- A kitchen sponge, or a few sheets of folded kitchen roll, damp rather than soaked.
- Baking or greaseproof parchment on top.
It costs next to nothing and performs nearly as well as a bought palette. What you give up is the seal: a bought palette with a proper lid keeps paint alive for days between sessions, where a sandwich box tends to manage overnight. If you paint most evenings you will not notice; if you paint in bursts a few weeks apart, that is the difference worth paying for.
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.
- Check the sheet size before buying refills - the commonest wasted purchase on this shelf.
- Change the foam when it starts to smell. Standing water plus paint grows things; a fresh foam and a rinsed tray fixes it, and mould on the sponge will spoil paint faster than it dries.
Compare current prices on every palette and refill we have checked on the wet palettes shelf, which sits with the rest of the tools and accessories section.
Shop wet palettes
A wet palette pays for itself in saved paint and better consistency.
Army Painter Wet Palette
Best price
$20 US delivery, 2-7 working days, free over $80
Buy at Warlord Gamesexcl. delivery
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