Liquitex Basics Acrylic Paint Set: What a Procurement Manager Actually Orders

Three art teachers can say “we need acrylic paint” and mean three completely different orders. One teacher needs supplies for students who are learning color mixing. Another needs paint for a final portfolio. The third needs something to put on a retail shelf. I’m not a painter, but I sign purchase orders. For the last seven years I’ve handled buying for a 900-student visual-arts school—about $140,000 in annual materials and roughly 400 tracked orders. That experience has taught me to stop asking “which paint is best?” and start asking “what job is this paint supposed to do?”

The same logic applies to any tool. A Starbucks nutrition calculator is useful for food. A cap rate calculator is useful for real estate. Learning how to use a protractor is useful in geometry. Different jobs, different tools. The same is true for Liquitex Basics acrylic paint and Liquitex Professional Heavy Body. Neither one is “better” in general—they answer different questions.

So instead of writing a one-size review, here are the three scenarios I use when deciding what to order.

Scenario 1: The main goal is learning and experimenting

If a class is working through basic exercises—mixing tints, testing brushwork, learning how paint behaves on gesso—a liquitex basics acrylic paint set is usually my default. Basics is Liquitex’s student-and-classroom-priced line. On the US site (liquitex.com, as of January 2025), it sits in its own category, separate from Professional Heavy Body and Professional Soft Body. That separation is not an insult; it tells you what the product is designed to do.

In a foundation classroom, students don’t need maximum pigment load. They need paint that won’t dry into a rubbery mess while they pause to watch a demo, and they need to feel okay about squeezing out paint and making mistakes. A Basics jar or tube is affordable enough to let that happen. It is not the absolute cheapest acrylic on the market, but it is cheap enough to be used, and that matters more than price per milliliter.

One warning: a bigger set is not always a better set. Check the color list against the syllabus before ordering. More tubes does not automatically mean more value. I once ordered a large promotional set because the unit cost looked great, only to discover that the palette didn’t cover the color exercises the teacher had planned. We had to place a second order for the missing colors, which killed the savings.

That mistake taught me something I now apply to every purchase: the real metric is cost per completed exercise, not cost per tube. I only believed that after a more expensive failure. A few years earlier, I approved a switch to a cheaper craft acrylic because the spreadsheet looked fantastic. The class used twice as much paint, the colors looked dull, and the teacher had to redo demonstrations. We spent roughly $1,100 on extra gesso, replacement panels, and the unglamorous work of patching the budget. The cheap option was the most expensive mistake in my first two years on the job.

Scenario 2: The work is going to be graded, sold, exhibited, or kept long-term

For final work, a Basics set alone isn’t the right call. That’s when I order open-stock professional acrylics in the specific colors the student actually uses, and I usually include a bottle of Liquitex acrylic varnish as well.

This isn’t about status or brand snobbery. From a procurement perspective, a damaged or faded final piece costs more than any tube of paint. If someone is building a portfolio, an extra $3 per tube is cheaper than having a painting fail because the pigment load was too low or the surface wasn’t protected. I’d rather spend money at the front end than watch a student redo a project after the first attempt didn’t hold up.

One distinction people sometimes miss: varnish is not acrylic medium. Liquitex acrylic varnish—available in gloss, satin, and matte—is a top coat, applied after the paint has dried. Medium is mixed into the paint to change its performance. They are not interchangeable. I’ve seen first-time buyers confuse the two, and it usually ends with a wasted bottle and a cloudy surface.

When varnish is part of the order, my advice is simple: use a small bottle at first, test on a scrap panel, and follow the label about drying time. Acrylic paint can feel dry in an hour but still need more time before varnish. If you’re working in a humid climate, be even more patient. I’m not a conservator, and I don’t pretend every painting needs varnish. But if it’s going to be shipped, displayed, or stored, the cost of skipping it can be much higher than the cost of the bottle.

Scenario 3: You are buying for a store, catalog, or classroom resale program

Retail buyers face a different version of the same question. If I were stocking shelves, I would keep a liquitex basics acrylic paint set near the front of the acrylic section. It is a strong entry-level product, and it helps new painters start without fear.

I would also put Liquitex acrylic varnish close by, not hidden in a separate aisle. Many people finish their first painting and then ask what to do next. They want something to protect it. If varnish is not right there, that final sale goes somewhere else. Stocking both is not about pushing extras; it is about completing the project.

How to decide when it’s not obvious

Here is the filter I use when a teacher or manager asks me for a recommendation:

• If the work is practice, skill-building, or exploration, buy a Liquitex Basics acrylic paint set.
• If the work is a final project, commission, portfolio entry, or exhibition piece, buy professional open stock plus Liquitex acrylic varnish.
• If you are buying to sell to other people, stock both—the Basics set for entry-level painters and the varnish for the moment they finish something important.

For mixed groups, don’t force one solution across the whole class. I like to order Basics sets for the room and keep a few professional tubes—especially titanium white and a good primary blue—at the teacher’s demo station. That gives students a solid working material while still showing them what professional acrylic can do.

After several years of watching budgets get wasted, I’ve come to believe that the real budget leak is rarely the retail price. It’s buying the wrong level of product for the situation. A bargain paint that doesn’t produce usable work is not cost effective. A professional set that sits unused because students are afraid to squeeze it is not a good investment either.

So before comparing brands or bottle sizes, compare jobs. That is the single most useful practice I’ve developed as a buyer, and it applies just as well to paint as it does to calculators, protractors, and every other tool in the school supply order.