How to Mix Oil Paint

Oil is the honest medium: what you mix is close to what you get, because it barely shifts as it dries. Chromilla treats oil as drying true to colour, so an oil recipe is a straight statement of the ratio. The difficulty moves elsewhere, into tinting strength and into the order you lay the layers down.

Open the mixer in oil

What makes mixing in oil different

It dries true to colour

Chromilla models oil at a 1 per cent value shift, which is inside the neutral band, so no dry-down compensation is applied. The wet swatch is a fair preview, unlike acrylic.

Tinting strength decides the mix

Phthalos and quinacridones can dominate at 4 per cent of the mix while a white sits at 86 per cent and does almost nothing to the hue. Equal blobs never mean equal influence.

Fat over lean, always

Each layer needs more oil than the one beneath it. This is a structural rule, not a mixing one, but it limits how much you can thin an early layer with solvent while chasing a colour.

Long open time is a mixing advantage

You can adjust a mix on the canvas for hours. Use that: land the ratio, then push the last few per cent wet into wet rather than rebuilding the pile on the palette.

Technique guides

Oil tinting strength: why a little blue goes further than a little whiteTinting strength, not volume, decides an oil mix. Worked ratios showing why 4 per cent phthalo blue changes a mix more than 40 per cent white.

Everyday colors in oil

Short recipes with real tube ratios, solved for oil.

See every colour in the mix library

Back to the guides hub, or read the science behind the solver. This page lives at /guides/oil.