Miniature painting supplies split cleanly into two piles: the short list you will touch on every single model, and the long aisle of extras that only matter once a specific technique calls for them. New painters almost always overspend on the second pile and underspend on the first. This guide is the first pile, in the order the paint actually meets the model.
Paint: one working set beats three starter sets
You need a small set of acrylics made for miniatures — not craft-store acrylic, which is ground coarser and fights you on detail (we cover the difference in can you use acrylic paint on miniatures). Any of the major miniature ranges works: Citadel, Vallejo, The Army Painter, Pro Acryl, Two Thin Coats, Reaper and the rest all cover the same jobs at similar prices, and our seven-brand comparison breaks down where each one is strongest.
A practical starting set is 10 to 15 colors: the primaries, a warm and cool brown, a bone or off-white, a true black and white, one metallic silver and gold, and a dark wash. Every catalog color in every major brand is charted on this site with swatches, so before buying a color twice across brands, check its conversion — the match may already be on your desk.
Primer: the supply that decides whether everything else sticks
Acrylic paint will not grip bare plastic, resin, or metal reliably; primer is what it bonds to. One can or bottle of black, white, or grey primer is enough to start, and the choice between aerosol and brush-on liquid matters more than the brand — the trade-offs are the whole subject of our primer guide.
Brushes: two good ones, not ten cheap ones
A size 1 or 0 round with a real point does ninety percent of the work on a 28–32 mm miniature. Add a cheap larger brush for base coats and drybrushing that you are allowed to ruin. Synthetic brushes are fine to learn with; a sable round is a pleasure upgrade, not a requirement. What kills brushes is paint drying in the ferrule, so rinse often — brush soap is a genuinely useful extra.
A palette that keeps paint workable
Miniature acrylics dry in minutes on a dry surface, which is why a wet palette — a shallow tray, a sponge, and parchment on top — is the one accessory nearly every experienced painter ends up with. It keeps a session's paint workable for hours and thins paint on its own. You can buy one, or make one from a takeaway container for nothing.
Light, and something to hold
A daylight-temperature lamp changes what you can see more than any brush upgrade; color-matching under a warm bulb is how models end up two shades off. A painting handle (or a cork and poster tack) keeps your fingers off wet paint and steadies the model against your brush hand.
The extras that can wait
Airbrushes, texture pastes, oil washes, pigment powders, varnish ranges, and technical paints all do real jobs — for specific techniques you will meet later. None of them belong in a first order. When a project calls for one, the specific tool guide (like our airbrush kit rundown) is the time to read up.
The whole list in one order
Ten to fifteen miniature acrylics from any major brand, one primer, a size 0 or 1 round brush plus a rough brush, a wet palette, a daylight lamp, and a handle. That is the entire supplies list that matters — everything else on this site, from the conversion charts to the mixing calculator, exists to make that small kit go further.