About KALOUR
KALOUR is a direct-to-consumer art supplies brand selling through kalourart.com and Amazon, built around large-format colored pencil sets that run from 72 pieces up to a 520-piece flagship set. Beyond the wax-based colored pencils we feature, the catalog includes watercolor pencils, multi-medium drawing and sketching kits that combine graphite, colored, metallic, and pastel pencils in one box, and companion sketchbooks. The sets are manufactured in China and positioned as affordable sets aimed at adult colorists and hobbyists rather than professional or archival work.
Independent reviewers outside our own testing have reached similar conclusions. Aisling D'Art rated a 120-pencil KALOUR set 4 out of 5, calling it "a good, high-quality set for a remarkably low price" with cores "firm but not super-hard" and an "impressive" color range spanning warms, cools, brights, and muted tones. Coloring Butterfly's review reached a similar verdict on value while flagging the same durability tradeoff we found: soft cores that wear down and can split under repeated sharpening. That combination, strong pigmentation and blending at a very low per-pencil cost, with no published lightfastness ratings and less structural durability than premium wax sets, is consistent with what we saw in our own testing of the 72-count set.
Brand website: kalourart.com
What KALOUR makes
KALOUR's range runs wider than the products we review. The lines we know best from our own testing are marked with a star:
Colored Pencil Sets
wax-based soft-core sets from 72 to 520 pieces — featured on DeskRated
Watercolor Pencils
water-soluble sets for mixed-media and beginner watercolor work
Drawing & Sketching Kits
multi-medium kits combining graphite, colored, metallic, and pastel pencils
Sketchbooks
companion sketchbooks sold alongside the pencil sets
Sketch Sets
curated bundles pairing pencils with sketching tools
Why we recognized KALOUR
The DeskRated Top Brand recognition isn't paid for and can't be applied for. We award it to the brands whose products consistently stand out in our hands-on category reviews. KALOUR earned it on the strength of the products below, evaluated the same way every product on this site is: bought, used at a real desk, and judged on merit.
KALOUR products we rated highly
KALOUR 72 Count Colored Pencils for Adult Coloring, Soft Core
Soft wax cores lay down creamy, blendable color at the lowest entry cost of any genuinely blendable set we tested, about eighteen cents per pencil, with a full 72-color range that matches sets costing three times as much. The set has built more than 12,000 Amazon reviews at a 4.7-star average as an adult-coloring favorite, and it ships pre-sharpened in a labeled tin that's ready to use out of the box.
Read the 7 Best Colored Pencils of 2026 guide →What earned KALOUR the recognition
- One of our top picks for adult colorists, and the cheapest genuinely blendable wax-based set we tested at roughly eighteen cents per pencil.
- A full 72-color range that matches pricier competitors like Castle Art Supplies, giving enough palette depth for layered coloring-book work without mixing on the page.
- More than 12,000 Amazon reviews at a 4.7-star average, a strong consumer track record for an adult-coloring set at this price.
- Independent reviewers outside our own testing (Aisling D'Art, Coloring Butterfly) independently confirm the same strengths we found: vivid pigmentation and smooth blending well above the price point.
- Ships pre-sharpened in a labeled metal tin with color names printed on each barrel, ready to use without additional setup.