The best coloured pencils

Three selections of the best coloured pencils on a pink and purple background
(Image credit: Future / Castle Arts / Arteza / Kalour)

The best coloured pencils come in a wide range of styles, sets and colour choices. Whether you need hard or soft, muted or vibrant colours, we've picked out our favourite options for both hobbyists and professionals based on our own reviews and experience in creative tools.

To create this list, we've tested many of these pencils ourselves, trying them out in all manner of projects, including in our reviews of the best colouring books. We've also compared user reviews by artists and the applied our knowledge of the required specifications for different types of work to choose the best professional coloured pencils and best coloured pencils for artists, value options, and good choices for shading, lightfastness and more.

Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.

Ian Dean
Editor, Digital Arts & 3D

Ian Dean is Editor, Digital Arts & 3D at Creativebloq, and the former editor of many leading magazines. These titles included ImagineFX, 3D World and leading video game title Official PlayStation Magazine. In his early career he wrote for music and film magazines including Uncut and SFX. Ian launched Xbox magazine X360 and edited PlayStation World. For Creative Bloq, Ian combines his experiences to bring the latest news on AI, digital art and video game art and tech, and more to Creative Bloq, and in his spare time he doodles in Procreate, ArtRage, and Rebelle while finding time to play Xbox and PS5. He's also a keen Cricut user and laser cutter fan, and is currently crafting on Glowforge and xTools M1.

With contributions from