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Hi i am trying to be organise with my paints by sorting them by colour and tone/highlight. And collect specialist paints like wash and metallic (although sorted by colour where appropriate)

What I am finding is that across various companies I have colours that are the same or only slightly different. Would you choose one to go in the bin? And currently transferring all citadel paints to droppers which frees up space and have considered choosing one paint to be thinner specifically for airbrushing and the other for brush work. But I’m not sure if that’s necessary.

Interested to see how you organise your self

I unfortunately do not have a space dedicated for miniatures. What I have is esentialy a pile of stuff and a kitchen table. I am trying out oils as of a few days, and you are expected to mix those instead of having a pile of them so I hope that will help clear up some space if i transition fully to them.

I had one of those paintier carousels, weighed down with more pots and bottles than it was supposed to carry. GW, vallejo, coat d'arms, ral partha europe and more. Everything got divided out into colours, warm and cool hues, lights and darks.

These days they're all jumbled in a cardboard box.

Found these at local dollar store.
And group my paint by colors.

I sometimes spend a bit of time grouping my paints into metallics, paint type, colour group... Then, after a single painting session I find I used ove half of them, moved the others trying to find one specific paint which was already on the table, and it's all jumbled up again. I keep them in a drawer of my work desk, with the brushes etc.

The rolltop desk I use as my modelling and painting station has a shelf running just beneath the roll top, divided into several sections. That's where I keep my paints, grouped by colour (blacks/whites/greys, browns/fleshtones/yellows, oranges/reds, pinks/purples, blues/greens), then metallics all together, then texture paints all together, then varnishes, medium and liquid greenstuff.

I once tried grouping by type of paint (base, layer, wash, technical) but found it... unhelpful. Technical paints that aren't texture paints are just grouped in with others of a similar hue now, so Blood For The Blood God is in with my other reds.

The only problem now is that my ancient pot of Space Wolves Grey keeps hopping back and forth between the 'greys' section and the 'blues' section...

My setup is 1 drawer for citadel, 1 for everything in dropper bottles. It's organized but also a mess at the same time, since I don't have them sorted and the dropper drawer has 2 foam cutouts over each other, so I have to look at at least 4 trays to find my colors, I also have a drawer for all technical paints and washes and 1 drawer for everything metalic.

I have a shelving system where things are more or less sorted by colour, and then washes and metallics. It however has some issues because of my colourblindness. But at the same time, that makes things much more interesting.

I used to keep my paints grouped by color in little open small parts containers. That made sense to me, since I'll usually be looking for a particular shade of green, blue or whatever. Then, based on the paint type from thick GW to thin Vallejo Air paints, thin as needed. I decant the GW paints to dropper bottles, which works for me. It's not like the paint they buy and sell is bad, it's just the pots are silly.

In an attempt to make this a bit nicer, I made two frames to take all this and make it instantly visible:

 Stephanius wrote:

In an attempt to make this a bit nicer, I made two frames to take all this and make it instantly visible:

Spoiler:

Now that's what I'm talkin' about.

What I think is funny is that in the original post I asked if anyone threw their paints away under some circumstances. As I expected no one has even acknowledged it haha

I have a drawer for my paints and they're ordered in terms of colour and I try to sort them by hue as well.

That lasts for the best part of a week and then they get jumbled up!

Part of last weekend was spent making this;

It was mainly to stop the paints falling over when I open the drawer. It’s currently sorted by colour, but I’ve only done one paint session since I installed it, so we’ll see how long that lasts

I have thrown paints away, but only if they’ve dried out. I did have a few part used pots of the same paint from different generations. From memory they were pretty much the same so I put them in the same dropper when I decanted from the old citadel pot

I generally store all my paints in a draw (which becomes mixed up fast ), but keep a rack out that can hold up to 37 paints where I'll keep common colours like black, white, greys, washes like nuln oil and agrax, stirland mud and agrellan earth. Then the rest of the slots of that rack are for paints for whatever project I'm working on at the time. Everything in that rack stays sorted by colour then how prominent that colour is for whatever I'm painting; the more I'd use it the more to the front that colour group is.

Garage bits bin storage. Sort by manufacturer, then either by number (Reaper), or color-related grouping. Reaper's numbering system made more sense when they had triads, but, now, it's just arbitrary.

What I've noticed is that, often, paint consistencies will vary by manufacturer. Frex, Army Painter can be thicker than Reaper.

I imagine, thought, the closer you are to display-level painting, and the more paints you have, the more precisely organized you will want your paints.

I still use craft paints for terrain, and they're all thrown in a plastic bin.

I've binned old paints before:

A) When they've been replaced by a new range - not always an exact match.

B) When I haven't used them for years and am not likely too either.

C) When running out of space.

C is usually the deciding factor prompting me to take action on A or B

I use nail polish racks to store paints. While they are slightly organized by type/color, it’s still a bit of a jumble. Less then when they were loose on the desk, but not by color or anything. I have a hard time remembering to put them back on the shelf, much less in the right place.

Only time pots get thrown out is when they are dry.

After seeing gobert's super organised drawer I decided to splash out 45 quid on 2 paint racks and a cheap desktop book shelf and I am never going back!! I've rationalised the layer paints but kept the bases separate.