Water-based acrylics are the right starting point for almost every beginner: easy cleanup with water rather than solvents, low smell, and forgiving of mistakes while you're still learning to handle a brush. Enamels and lacquers both still have real advantages once you know what you're doing, but neither is where a first kit should start. This isn't a hierarchy where one system beats the others outright - it's three different tools that suit different stages and different parts of the same hobby. Read this once and you'll be able to look at any bottle on the paint wall and know roughly what you're getting, rather than guessing from the label art.
Acrylics: strengths & limits
Acrylic paint thins and cleans up with water or a dedicated acrylic thinner, dries quickly, and produces very little smell compared with the alternatives - a genuine advantage if you're painting somewhere with limited ventilation or shared space. The trade-off is a slightly less durable finish once fully cured, and a tendency to need more coats for full, even coverage than enamel or lacquer typically require.
Tamiya's acrylic range uses X (gloss) and XF (flat/matte) prefixes, and it's worth knowing early that a bottle labelled X-20A is specifically the acrylic thinner - using a different Tamiya thinner without the "A" suffix on an acrylic paint won't give the results you're expecting.
For a first kit, acrylic's forgiveness matters more than any of its other qualities. Mistakes wipe up with water while still wet, brushes clean up without solvent, and a beginner can experiment without committing to a system that punishes slow learning. That alone is worth more early on than the marginally tougher finish enamel or lacquer would give you.
Enamels: where they still shine
Enamel paint is solvent-based, dries slower than acrylic, and levels out more smoothly as a result - fewer visible brush strokes on a hand-painted finish, which is a real reason some builders still reach for it over acrylic on specific parts. It's also noticeably more durable once cured, which matters for parts that get handled often, like a display model's landing gear or a diecast-style car's opening doors.
Confusingly, Tamiya's enamel range reuses the exact same X and XF numbering as their acrylics - an XF-2 Flat White exists in both acrylic and enamel versions, with completely different chemistry underneath the identical name. Check the bottle carefully rather than assuming a code you recognise always means the same product.
Enamel's slower dry time cuts both ways: it gives more time to correct brush strokes before the paint sets, but it also means longer waits between coats and more time for dust to settle into a wet surface. Many builders end up using enamel selectively - for washes and weathering rather than full-model base coats - once they've moved past acrylic-only builds.
Lacquers: performance with rules
Lacquer paint (Mr. Color and similar ranges) sprays exceptionally smoothly and dries hard and durable, which is why it's the choice serious airbrush painters often reach for once they're past the beginner stage. The rules that come with it are real, though: strong solvent smell, real ventilation requirements, and a tendency to attack certain plastics and earlier paint layers if applied carelessly. Whether you actually need an airbrush to get good results, or a brush will do for now, is its own question we cover properly in Airbrush vs Hand-Brushing: What Beginners Actually Need - but lacquer is the system where the gap between brush and airbrush results is most obvious.
Compatibility is the other real consideration with lacquer: it can attack certain plastics and strip earlier paint layers if applied without a barrier coat, which is exactly the kind of mistake that ruins hours of earlier work in seconds. This doesn't make lacquer a bad choice - it just means the system rewards experience in a way acrylic doesn't punish beginners for lacking.
This is squarely a "once you're comfortable" paint system rather than a first-kit choice - the performance is real, but so is the extra care it demands around ventilation and layering that a beginner hasn't yet built habits around.
Safety & ventilation basics
All three paint types benefit from working in a well-ventilated space, but the requirement scales up sharply from acrylic to lacquer. Acrylic can reasonably be brush-painted at a normal indoor table with a window cracked open. Enamel benefits from better airflow, especially with a brush cleaner involved. Lacquer, particularly sprayed, needs a well-ventilated area or a proper spray booth - it's not a paint to spray in a closed room regardless of how careful you are. This isn't meant to be alarming - it's proportionate caution that scales with how strong the solvent is.
A real question we get asked fairly often is what to do when a spray can's nozzle starts leaking rather than spraying cleanly - that's usually a faulty nozzle rather than anything you've done wrong, and swapping the nozzle (or asking us to replace the can if it persists) sorts it out.
Storage matters too, not just active painting. Solvent-based paints (enamel and lacquer) should be kept away from heat sources and out of reach of kids and pets regardless of how careful you are during actual use - the sealed bottle on a shelf is still worth treating with the same respect as the open one on your bench.
Which ranges we stock and how they map
Our Acrylic Paints collection covers the water-based range most beginners should start with, including Tamiya's X/XF line and options from other brands. Enamel Paints covers the solvent-based range, including Tamiya's own enamel line under the same colour names as their acrylics. Lacquer Paints covers the sprayable, fast-drying range, including Gunze's Mr. Color line for anyone ready to move past brush painting. Checking the specific product page before buying is still worth doing, since ranges and specific colours in stock can shift over time.
One decision that sits upstream of all three paint types is whether to prime first. A light primer coat gives any of these three systems something more consistent to grip than bare plastic, and it's worth deciding on before you've settled on acrylic, enamel or lacquer rather than after - we walk through why and how properly in How to Prime a Model Kit (And Why You Should).
For a specific example: if you're painting a 1/72 scale aircraft, a couple of bottles of acrylic in the main colour plus a spray can for large flat areas is a sensible starting kit, with brush touch-ups reserved for detail work a spray can can't reach cleanly.
FAQs
Do I need acrylic thinner, or is water fine?
Water works, but it tends to give a patchier finish than proper acrylic thinner, which flows and levels more evenly. If you're after a smooth, even coat rather than a deliberately rough or textured look, the dedicated thinner is worth having on the shelf rather than relying on water as a substitute. For anything beyond a quick touch-up, keeping a small bottle of thinner alongside your paint collection is a cheap habit that pays off on almost every session. Exact ratios vary by brand and by whether you're brushing or airbrushing, so treat any ratio you read as a starting point to test rather than a fixed rule - we cover proper starting ratios for each paint type in Thinning Paint: Ratios for Brush and Airbrush.
What's the best white paint for model building?
Tamiya Flat White is a dependable, widely-used choice, available as both a brush-on acrylic pot and a spray can - the spray can suits large flat areas quickly and evenly, while the pot version handles smaller detail work a spray can would overspray. Which format to reach for depends on the area you're covering more than any quality difference between them. Either version covers the same colour consistently, so switching between pot and can partway through a project won't create a visible mismatch.
What's the difference between Tamiya's X and XF codes?
X means gloss, XF means flat (matte) - that part's straightforward. The confusing part is that Tamiya uses the same X/XF numbering and colour names across both their acrylic and enamel ranges, so "XF-2" exists as two chemically different products depending on which bottle you pick up. Check the bottle for "acrylic" or "enamel" specifically rather than assuming the code alone tells you everything. This is exactly the kind of small print that's easy to miss when you're new to the hobby and just reaching for the bottle with the right-looking colour name.
Can I paint acrylic over enamel, or mix the two?
Acrylic over fully-cured enamel generally works, since enamel dries to a hard, stable surface that acrylic can sit on top of without reacting badly. The reverse is riskier: enamel's stronger solvents can lift or wrinkle an acrylic layer underneath if it hasn't fully cured first, so give any acrylic base coat proper drying time before an enamel layer goes over it. Mixing the two paints directly in the same pot doesn't work at all, since they run on different solvent systems that simply won't combine into a usable, even colour. If you want the properties of both on a single model, apply them as separate layers in the right order rather than trying to blend them together.
Ready to pick your paint? Browse Acrylic Paints, Enamel Paints or Lacquer Paints, or start with Best Model Kits for Beginners in NZ if you're still choosing a first kit. Questions? Message Us or visit us in Auckland.
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