The Army PaintervsVallejo
The Army Painter and Vallejo both sit near the top of most painters' shortlists, and on paper they look alike: 306 Army Painter colors against 334 from Vallejo. The split that actually matters is what those colors are. Vallejo's 334 are almost entirely opaque paint across Model Color and Game Color, while nearly a third of Army Painter's catalog is the Speedpaint one-coat line.
The Army Painter
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Vallejo
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Our take
Which one should you buy?
If your bottleneck is getting whole units finished, Army Painter has the edge, and it is not close. It carries 97 wash-like and one-coat colors, mostly the Speedpaint 2.0 range, against just 10 anything-like-a-wash across Vallejo's two ranges here. That one number is the whole story: Army Painter is selling you a shading system, Vallejo is selling you a paint library.
For opaque basecoats and layering the two are interchangeable in practice. 286 Army Painter colors have a mapped Vallejo equivalent and 329 Vallejo colors map back the other way, so whichever you already own, you can match most of it in the other brand. Vallejo leans historical: its Model Color range is heavy on browns, buffs, and greys, which is why scale modelers reach for it first. Army Painter's Warpaints Fanatic spreads wider across saturated fantasy color.
Format is the other deciding factor. Vallejo's dropper bottles suit palette mixing and airbrush thinning, and the range rewards being used in small measured amounts. Army Painter's Fanatic bottles hold a generous volume and the ranges feel built for straight-from-the-bottle tabletop work.
- Pick The Army Painter ifyou paint armies and want one-coat Speedpaint shading built into the range.
- Pick Vallejo ifyou want the deepest opaque and historical-earth library for mixing, layering, and airbrushing.
Measured overlap
Converting between them
286 Army Painter colors have a mapped Vallejo equivalent, and 329 Vallejo colors map to an Army Painter one. The opaque colors swap freely; the Speedpaint line is where Army Painter stands alone.
The Army Painter, Warpaints and Speedpaint are trademarks of The Army Painter ApS; this site is unaffiliated. Vallejo is a trademark of Acrylicos Vallejo S.L.; this site is unaffiliated.