The Army Painter Skin Tones Paint Set is worth buying if you want to mix your own custom flesh tones rather than paint straight from a bottle, and it is a poor fit if you just want a handful of ready to use colors you can grab and apply. This set is built around blending, not selection.
What is in the box, and why it is different
The official contents are 9 Warpaints Acrylics, 3 Pigment Toners, 3 Quickshade Washes, and 1 Mixing Medium, for 16 total paint pieces, plus empty bottles and mixing balls to store whatever custom blends you make. That is a genuinely different structure from a set like the Vallejo Skin Tones box, which hands you 8 fixed colors and expects you to layer between them.
Army Painter did not publish an itemized bottle by bottle list of the specific 9 skin tones and 3 toners included in this particular box, and third party listings vary in how they describe individual names, so this guide will not guess at exact bottle names beyond what Army Painter itself confirms. What is confirmed and worth explaining properly is what each category of paint in the box actually does.
Effect colors: what the toners, washes, and medium actually do
The 9 Warpaints Acrylics are your base skin tones, straightforward opaque colors you apply as you would any base coat.
The 3 Pigment Toners are concentrated, high saturation colors meant to be mixed into a base tone in small amounts rather than used alone straight from the bottle. A drop of a toner shifts a base skin color warmer, cooler, or more saturated without changing its coverage or drying time much, which is how this set lets you build custom complexions instead of choosing from a fixed list. This is the core of the mixing system: you are not picking a finished color, you are building one.
The 3 Quickshade Washes are transparent recess shading paints, the same category as Army Painter's broader Quickshade line. You apply a wash over a dry base coat and it pools into recesses, deepening shadows around fingers, eyes, and folds of skin automatically, without hand blending. Washes are the fastest way to add depth to skin without freehand shadow work.
The Mixing Medium is a clear extender. Adding it to any of the acrylics or toners increases transparency and working time without diluting pigment strength the way plain water would, which matters when you are glazing thin layers of a toner over a base coat to shift its tone gradually.
Together, the toners plus medium give you a genuine custom mixing system: base tone, toner to adjust hue, medium to control opacity and blend time, wash to finish the recesses. That is a steeper approach than a fixed palette but it produces a wider range of finished complexions from fewer bottles.
Coverage gaps
Because the exact 9 skin tones are not itemized by Army Painter in public listings, you cannot know in advance exactly which specific bottle you are getting without opening the box, which makes it harder to cross shop against a competitor's named colors before buying. There is also no dedicated highlight white or eye detail color included, so faces with visible eyes still need at least one extra bottle from your existing collection.
Who it suits, who should skip it
This set suits painters who already know how to glaze and blend and want a compact toolkit for building custom, natural looking skin across a whole army of different characters. It is a poor first purchase for a beginner who wants to open a box and start applying color immediately with predictable results, since the mixing step adds a layer of decision making a fixed palette does not require.
If a fixed 8 color palette sounds more appealing, the Vallejo Skin Tones set is the more direct comparison, and our Army Painter versus Vallejo brand comparison covers how the two brands differ more broadly.
Find the set here: Army Painter Skin Tones Paint Set on Amazon(affiliate link).
FAQ
How many colors are in the Army Painter Skin Tones set?
16 paint pieces total: 9 Warpaints Acrylics, 3 Pigment Toners, 3 Quickshade Washes, and 1 Mixing Medium, plus empty storage bottles and mixing balls.
What is a Pigment Toner, and how is it different from a normal paint?
A toner is a concentrated color meant to be mixed into a base tone in small amounts to shift its hue, rather than applied on its own. It is a blending tool, not a finished skin color.
Do I need to mix every time I use this set?
No. The 9 base acrylics can be used straight from the bottle like any normal paint. The toners, medium, and washes are there for painters who want to push beyond the fixed 9 tones into custom blends.
Is this set better than Vallejo's fixed skin tone box?
Neither is strictly better. This set rewards painters comfortable with mixing and gives more range from fewer bottles. Vallejo's set gives faster, more predictable results out of the box. See the Vallejo Skin Tones guide for the direct comparison.
Can beginners use this set successfully?
Yes, using just the 9 acrylics as fixed colors without touching the toners, but a beginner will get more value from a simpler fixed palette set until glazing and mixing feel comfortable.