New Iridescent and Interference QoR Watercolors
GOLDEN introduced new colors to QoR Watercolors in February of 2024, six months after this article about our lightfast testing of the entire QoR watercolor line. The newest colors were not included in the article since the paints were not yet available to artists. We tested the new colors as part of their development, and this addendum to the original article is now making the latest lightfastness results available to artists.
New Pigmented QoR Watercolors
QoR has 13 new pigmented colors, and our test results confirm they are all Lightfast I watercolor paints (Delta E results between 0 and 4). Since transparent watercolor is often used at very high dilutions, we challenged our paints to a greater extent by increasing the ratio of dilution (added water) and extension (added Titanium White) for this round of testing. The new ratios are on the chart of results below. We have also included photos of the tests so you can visually evaluate the changes yourself.
New Interference and Iridescent QoR Watercolors
QoR also has eight new iridescent and interference colors that a spectrophotometer cannot read accurately. The mica that gives these paints their shimmer and shine, creates a reflective surface that causes the dry watercolor to act like a mirror and reflect light back into the sensor. This results in inaccurate readings. Because of the reflectivity, we cannot create quantitative conclusions about the lightfastness from spectrophotometer readings. However, these Iridescent colors tested to the same stringent standards as all the QoR colors, shown in the reference photographs below, demonstrate that these colors visually exhibit exceptional lightfastness.
We hope this information is helpful, and remind you that results of lightfast testing for the other QoR Watercolor paints may be found in the original 2023 Just Paint article, “Recent QoR Lightfast Testing.”
The Chart of Results is very helpful — thank you. I tried to make my own chart working from the excel spreadsheet of the original 2023 article, using colored pencils, but it was not as successful as this one.
Thanks, Cynthia. It takes a team and a trained eye like Cathy’s to produce this sort of data. It’s impressive that you attempted your own. We applaud such efforts!