Derwent Coloured Pencils Compared: Which Range Is Right for You?

By Carol Leather · Last updated June 2026

Derwent is an English company based in Keswick in the Lake District, trading for years as the Cumberland Pencil Company. Of all the pencil makers, they are probably the most active at bringing out new ranges, which is good news for choice and a little bewildering when you are trying to pick your first set.

There are a lot of Derwent ranges, and they are not all trying to do the same thing. The range makes more sense once you split it three ways: the dry colour pencils (soft, hard, or built to last), the water-soluble pencils that turn into paint, and a few specialist or now-discontinued lines worth knowing about. Below I take each one in turn and give you my honest take, with some sections linking to a fuller page of their own.

Derwent ranges at a glance

A quick comparison before the detail. Skim this to narrow it down, then read the section on whichever ranges interest you.

Swipe sideways to see every column.

Prices are Derwent's recommended retail, early 2026. Shops such as Jackson's and Cult Pens often sell well below this, especially on the bigger sets, so treat these as a guide. The discontinued Studio and Artbars ranges, and the budget Academy student line, are left off the table.

Derwent Coloursoft Pencils

Coloursoft were Derwent's original answer to the American Prismacolor: a soft, waxy pencil in strong, bright colours, in a range of 72.

The earth colours are completely light stable, but a few of the paler shades, pink for example, can fade, so be a little cautious with those if the work needs to last.

The softness of the core lets you lay down strong colour, but it comes with a catch. Over-sharpen the point and it crumbles easily, which is wasteful. Building many layers is simple, even on hot pressed paper (a smooth, hard watercolour surface), and burnishing the top layers gives a lovely smooth, well-covered finish.

One small frustration: the 8mm round barrel does not fit every power sharpener. If you are new to layering, my guide to layering coloured pencils walks you through the technique, and the paper you choose makes a real difference with a soft pencil like this.

Want to see the full set? Download the Derwent Coloursoft colour chart (PDF).

Derwent Procolour Pencils

Procolour launched in the UK in mid-2017. The handling sits somewhere between the harder Artists range and the softer Coloursoft, a sensible middle ground.

They take a very fine point in a power sharpener, with little or no crumbling from the needle-sharp tip in use. The 72 colours are a slightly different selection from Coloursoft, so a combination of the two lines gives you well over a hundred unique colours.

Procolour are not quite as vibrant as Coloursoft, so an all-Procolour drawing tends to read as more subdued, but possibly more detailed. The finer point suits the precise pencil strokes that give your work control. Think of them as a softer version of the old Artists pencil.

The one real grumble, raised by a lot of artists, is lightfastness: too many colours are not highly rated. Derwent's own figure is that around 72% of the range stays stable, which for a line aimed at professionals feels like a missed opportunity. If you use them seriously, it is worth marking the lower-rated colours clearly, as I have done in the photo above.

There is another option if you own a full set of Coloursoft too. Pull the few low-lightfast colours out of each line and amalgamate the good ones into a single excellent set. You lose a few pale colours, but nothing a layer of white or a little blending cannot handle, and you can tell the softer and harder pencils apart by the barrel colour.

Derwent Chromaflow Pencils

Chromaflow is the newest of Derwent's colour ranges, and the one most likely to be missing from older comparisons. The line first appeared in 2021 and was extended to its full 150 colours in spring 2024, which makes it the largest single colour selection Derwent offers.

It is a wax pencil, soft and smooth to lay down, sitting somewhere around Coloursoft and Procolour in feel but at a noticeably lower price. The colours are vibrant and blend readily, and they show up well on dark paper. Derwent position it as their affordable professional range, the step below the oil-based Lightfast.

On permanence, Chromaflow is mixed: a good proportion of the 150 is lightfast, but there is no range-wide guarantee, so if longevity is your priority Derwent themselves point you to Lightfast. It is the cheapest per pencil of all the colour ranges, and the big 150-colour tin is often discounted well below its list price, which makes it easy to get a lot of colour for your money.

Derwent Lightfast Pencils

A more recent range, and an unusual one for Derwent: the core has a higher proportion of oil than wax, where for years they concentrated on wax-based pencils.

Lightfast was released in 2018 with an initial 36 colours, every one tested at the highest lightfastness level. More colours followed as testing was completed, bringing the range to 100, all individually tested and rated to the top standard. This is the headline: every single colour is built to last.

They feel softer than the Artists range and quite different from Coloursoft, with a smooth, highly pigmented laydown that blends on the page with very little pressure. A genuinely lightfast coloured pencil was a holy grail for a long time. Caran d'Ache got there first with their Luminance range, still the main alternative, and worth weighing up on my Caran d'Ache page.

They are the premium range and priced like it, so they are not the first pencils most returning artists need unless permanence is the whole point of the work. The good news is that retailers discount Lightfast heavily, so the bigger sets can be found for much less than the recommended price. Shop around before you buy a tin.

Derwent Artists Pencils, the original range

The Artists range is the original Derwent coloured pencil, and it is still going. It suits a hard surface, cartridge or a smooth (hot pressed) watercolour paper, where the formula can take a very fine point. That makes it a favourite for the fine detail botanical artists need.

There is a good selection of greens and landscape colours, and some unique shades you will not find elsewhere. One correction worth making, because it gets repeated a lot: the range is still 120 colours. What changed is that the largest tin Derwent now sells is 72, and the old 120-colour boxed set has been dropped from the UK line. To own all 120 you now buy smaller tins and top up with open stock.

These pencils were designed many years ago, so a larger-than-average number of colours have lower lightfastness ratings. They are still good pencils that plenty of professionals rely on, but check the ratings before using them for anything you want to last, and expect to use a fair bit of pressure to get the pigment down.

To browse the range, download the Derwent Artists colour chart (PDF).

Derwent Drawing Pencils

This is the range that has changed most recently, so if you knew it as a small set of earth colours, look again. For years it was just 24 natural shades. In October 2025 Derwent extended it to 72 colours, adding 48 new nature-inspired shades: greens, blues, soft purples and more alongside the original earths.

They are wax-based with a soft, creamy texture and a thick core, and they are all highly lightfast, which is unusual and welcome. They are ideal worked over the top of harder pencils such as the Artists range, and the natural palette is lovely for portraits and animal studies. I use them for animal whiskers laid over a drawing done in other coloured pencils.

The Chinese White is one of my favourites, buttery and opaque. You can buy them in sets of 6, 12, 24, 36 and now 72, or as open stock.

Derwent Watercolour Pencils

Derwent Watercolour pencils have been made for many years and were last reformulated in 2009. The current design has a dark blue hexagonal barrel. The older version had turquoise-coloured wood, and if you come across any with grey barrels, those are very old and poor compared with the latest.

The current line still has 72 colours, with a softer core and higher lightfastness than the old one, though some colours still rate poorly. The selection is good for landscapes, with a strong range of greens and browns. Unlike Inktense, these re-wet on the paper, the traditional watercolour behaviour. For the bigger picture, see my watercolour pencils hub.

One thing to know: some colours are less suited to broad, sweeping background washes, because the pigment is not as finely milled as in some other brands. Do not let that put you off. It only really shows when you heavily dilute the colour. Used dry and then wetted on the paper, you will usually be just fine.

One thing to keep in mind

An artist who took these to Tunisia, in temperatures around 30 degrees, found they softened and broke easily. Many of the softer brands can do this. In hot weather, consider keeping the pencils in a coolbag to reduce the problem.

Grab a bargain

If you want to try water-soluble pencils and you spot sets of the old turquoise-barrelled Watercolour pencils going cheap, take the offer. They are good pencils, a little harder to the touch than the new ones, and you may even get a smart wooden box with them. They might even cope better in Tunisia.

Inktense Water Soluble Range

Inktense has been one of Derwent's real success stories. The pencil range is 72 (71 colours plus an outliner pencil), and there is now a 100-colour tin as the largest set. There is a fuller write-up on my dedicated Inktense page.

These are water-soluble pencils that erase like a dry medium while dry, but once you add water they become permanent on the paper. Do not confuse permanence with lightfastness, though: there are still some lower-rated pigments here, if not too many.

They are a strong choice if you like bright, bold colour. A lot of professional artists use them to underpaint the paper before adding dry colour, which speeds the work up considerably. The colour takes a major step up in strength when wet, so you need to know what water will do before you commit. The first time you use them, test the pencils and paper, and keep the pigment light on the paper until you are used to them. I would make your own chart showing each colour dry and after wetting, because the darker colours come up very strong and only show their differences when well diluted. With practice you learn how much water to add for softer colour. They probably have the highest colour strength of any water-soluble pencil I have used.

The Inktense family has grown too. There are Inktense Blocks, hard pastel-like sticks for drawing or as a source of wet pigment, now joined by chunky XL Blocks. There is also an Inktense Paint Pan Studio set of 24 half-pans for working more like traditional watercolour.

To see every colour, download the Derwent Inktense colour chart (PDF).

Graphitint Pencils

Graphitint is a water-soluble coloured graphite pencil, in a range of 24 colours. Applied dry, they read as shades of grey. The colour only really appears once you add water.

The original formula was very low on fade resistance across half the colours, so the range was not recommended. An upgrade improved this considerably, though a few colours still rate low, so check before using them on lasting work. They are very soluble, with an interesting set of muted, shadowy colours that suit a different approach. If graphite is your thing, these are worth a try. There is now a Graphitint Paint Pan set too.

Curious how they look wet? Download the Derwent Graphitint colour chart (PDF).

Derwent Metallic Pencils

An interesting line of 20 reflective colours that work especially well on dark papers. Worth knowing if you read about them elsewhere: the range was reformulated and the current Metallic pencils are non-soluble, where the original version was water-soluble. Older comparison pages that call them water-soluble are out of date.

They are best used alone, and you do not need white underneath on black paper. They come as a 12 tin, smaller blister sets, a 20-colour gift set and a larger tub.

Two more Derwent ranges are worth knowing about, even though they are no longer made. Worth recognising if you come across them, but not where I would suggest starting.

Derwent Artbars

Artbars were triangular soft wax crayons, introduced in 2012, holding a soluble medium and a strong pigment load. They were handy for laying in backgrounds quickly and blended easily with water, more a craft product than a fine-art one.

Worth flagging if you are looking for them: Artbars have now been discontinued. You may still find clearance stock, but they are no longer part of the current range. The water-soluble-bar idea lives on to some extent in Derwent's Paint Pans.

Derwent Studio Pencils

Sadly the Studio pencils were discontinued in 2023. They are no longer in production or listed by Derwent, though run-out and secondhand stock may still turn up at some retailers. As they were a mainstay of the range for so long, I am keeping this note here for anyone who still has a set or is hunting one down.

The cores were the same as the Artists range, just thinner. Artists were sold in up to 120 colours with a round barrel and a 4mm core; Studio came in 72 colours with a hexagonal barrel and a 3.4mm core. Most colours matched across the two.

Environmentally friendly products

Derwent's newer ranges are made in a modern factory run to high environmental standards. The paint used on the wood is solvent-free, which is good news, with one quirk: a little colour can leach from the barrel onto your hand on a hot day.

One thing has shifted since this page was first written. Derwent no longer seem to be settling on a single standard set size. Between the 150-colour Chromaflow tin, the expanded 72-colour Drawing range and the 100-colour Lightfast and Inktense tins, the choice across the range is wider now than it has been for a while.

Accessories to consider

Derwent also make a Blender pencil and a Burnisher pencil, sold together in a pack with two of each, an eraser and a small sharpener, for around £5.50. The burnisher doubles as a resist for keeping pale lines reserved, which I cover on the burnishing page.

Beyond those, the company markets a battery eraser, various sharpeners, pencil extenders and tools for moving colour around on the paper.