Is it okay to mix different brands of acrylic paint?

Reader Question: Can you intermingle different brands of acrylic paints? I inherited some Liquitex & Duro brand acrylic paints & just bought a few Golden. When I run out of what I have, I intend to buy only Golden but hate to waste these other brands.

Yes, it is usually fine to inter-mix different brands of acrylic artist paints. I do it all the time! :)

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I'm not familiar with the Duro brand acrylics, but it seems from their website that they are professional quality, so you should be able to mix them with your Liquitex and Golden paints without any problems.

I use Golden and Liquitex Artist Acrylics myself, and mix them together all the time. Here are some things to keep in mind when it comes to mixing different brands of acrylic paint.

The mixture you create will adopt a combination of the characteristics of each brand. So if one is a Student Quality brand and the other is Artist Quality, the paint you mix will be somewhere in between. For instance, the resulting paint may not have the vibrancy or opacity you'd get if you'd have mixed 2 types of Artist Quality paint.

Similarly, if one brand is a heavy body acrylic and the other brand is a fluid acrylic, the mixture will be somewhere in between heavy and fluid, depending on the amounts you used. If you want to altar the consistency even further, you can use a gel or medium to make the acrylic mixture thinner or thicker.

Also, the chemical composition of different brands of acrylic paints may vary slightly, with some being more alkaline than others. Depending on the brands you mix, there is a slight chance that the mixture may turn out somewhat lumpy and strange. If this is the case, that particular mixture may not be usable, depending on what style you want to go for (maybe a strange, lumpy texture would work well on your painting, who knows?).

I hope that helps & Happy Painting!

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