Paint by Numbers Printable With Color Key: How to Read One

A printable paint by numbers is two files, not one: the numbered outline, and the color key that tells you what each number means. The outline is the easy half. The key is where free printables succeed or fail, and it is worth understanding before you print anything.

What a Color Key Is

A list matching every number on the template to a color. Keys come in three kinds, and they are not equally useful:

• Swatch keys. A printed patch of the actual color beside each number. The best sort — you can hold your mixed paint against the paper and compare directly.
• Named keys. "3 — medium sage." Fine when the name is a standard pigment name, unhelpful when it is a decorator's invention.
• Coded keys. Hex or RGB values, sometimes a specific brand's paint codes. Precise, but you have to translate them into paint you actually own.

A boxed kit sidesteps all of this: the pots are numbered to match the canvas, so the key is the pot. With a printable, the translation is your job, and it is the part beginners find hardest — harder, usually, than the painting.

Where the Format Came From

Paint by numbers was conceived in 1949 at the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit. Max Klein, who ran the company, backed the idea, and Dan Robbins drew the early designs, sold under the Craft Master name. The color key was part of it from the start — without it, a numbered outline is just a strange coloring page.

Reading a Key Well

Five things that make the difference between a clean result and a muddy one.

Mix everything before you start. Mix all your colors, put a dab of each on a scrap of the same paper you are painting on, and label them. Ten minutes at the start saves an hour of matching later.

Judge them dry, and in daylight. Acrylic dries darker than it looks wet, and a color matched under a lamp will be wrong by morning. This single habit fixes most color-key disappointment.

Watch for near-identical entries. Automatically generated keys often produce several colors nobody could tell apart. If numbers 7 and 8 look the same on your test strip, treat them as one color. The picture will not suffer.

Check the values, not the hues. Photograph your test strip and look at it in black and white. If two colors have the same lightness, they will read as one from across the room, however different their names. Getting the light-to-dark order right matters more than getting any single color exactly right.

Mix a batch, not a dab. Matching the same shade twice is much harder than matching it once. Mix half a pot's worth and keep it under a lid.

Making Your Own Key

If you have a template with no key — common with free downloads — you can build one.

1. Open the original photograph or reference image in any editor with a color picker.
2. Sample each region and note the value.
3. Group anything nearly identical together. Aim for 12 to 20 colors, not 40.
4. Mix each one, test it, and write the recipe down. "Two parts ochre, one part white, a touch of umber" is a key you can reproduce.

Fewer colors is almost always better. Twenty large sections in distinct colors makes a better painting than forty small ones in shades of the same green.

Practical Notes for Printables

• Print the key on the same paper as the template. Colors print differently on different stock, and a swatch key on glossy paper will not match your matte painting.
• Print a test page first and look at the smallest sections. If a brush tip will not fit inside one, print larger or simplify.
• Use card, not printer paper. Standard paper buckles the moment wet paint touches it. Card stock or watercolor paper at minimum.
• Keep the key beside you, not underneath the work. It will get paint on it either way, so print two.

When a Key Is More Trouble Than It Is Worth

Honestly: if you are matching more than about 20 colors by eye, the mixing will take longer than the painting, and the result depends on how good you are at mixing — which is the skill the format was invented to let you skip.

At that point a boxed kit is the better answer. The paints are mixed and numbered to the design, so the key is solved for you, and you spend the evening on brushwork instead. Our catalog is here, each kit includes an 11 by 17 printed reference so the numbers stay readable, and Custom Paint by Numbers does the whole conversion — outline, key and matched paints — from a photograph you upload.

If you would rather stay with printables, printable templates explained covers where to find them, and printables versus canvas kits weighs the two properly.