The Best Metallic Paints for Miniatures

Why metallics behave differently

A metallic paint is not pigment, it is suspended flake — tiny reflective platelets in a clear binder. Everything odd about metallics follows from that.

The flakes are much larger than pigment particles, so metallic paint is grainier and needs a thicker film to cover. They settle in the pot, so metallics need more shaking than anything else you own. They lie flat as the paint dries, which is why a brushed metallic can look dull and an airbrushed one looks polished — the airbrush lays the flakes down flatter and in a thinner film. And they will wreck a fine detail brush by lodging in the base of the bristles, which is why experienced painters keep a dedicated metal brush.

How we picked

• Coverage in one coat over black primer. Most metallics fail this and need two.
• How it takes a wash. A metallic that goes muddy under a black wash is of limited use, because washing is how metal stops looking like silver paint.
• Flake fineness. Coarse flake reads as glitter; fine flake reads as metal.
• What it needs from you. Brush-ready or airbrush-only is a large practical difference.

You need one silver, and it should be dark

A dark gunmetal is the right single metallic to own, and the reasoning is about what comes next. Metal looks like metal because of the contrast between bright reflections and dark shadow. Starting from a dark silver, one black wash creates that contrast for you and a light drybrush on the edges finishes it.

Starting from a bright chrome, a wash just dirties it and you have to hand-place the shadows. Bright silvers are a highlight color, not a basecoat.

So: a dark silver, a black wash, and optionally a bright silver for edges. Gold is a separate decision and only matters if your scheme has gold in it.

Getting metal to look like metal

1. Shake much longer than feels necessary. Metallic flake settles hard. Thirty seconds of real shaking, every time.
2. Basecoat with the dark silver over black primer. One coat if the paint is good, two if not. Do not thin it as far as you would thin a normal basecoat — over-thinned metallic separates and dries patchy.
3. Wash with a neutral black. Let it flow into the recesses. This is the step that does the work.
4. Drybrush or edge-highlight with a brighter silver. Very lightly. Metal reads best when the bright is confined to edges.

For the drybrushing motion specifically, see drybrushing miniatures — and use an actual drybrush, not your detail brush.

When lacquer metallics are worth it

Lacquer-based ranges have a far finer flake than any acrylic and can be buffed to a genuine mirror. Nothing else gets close. The cost is real: they need an airbrush, proper ventilation and a respirator, and they need their own gloss coat before any enamel wash or the wash lifts them.

Which makes them a clear yes for a display model with large polished surfaces — a mech, a vehicle, a chrome-armored character — and a clear no for forty infantry models where the metal is a sword and a belt buckle. If you are going down that route, the airbrush picks and a spray booth come first.