Urban Printer Wet Paint Palette Review

Last Updated on April 23, 2021 by FauxHammer

Wet palettes – specifically, the Urban Printer Wet Palette in this instance. If you’re a painter and you’re not using one you should be. Even if you’re not mixing colours and blending they will save you a lot of money over time simply because you won’t be going through paint nearly as much.

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I was once a dirty pot picker (that’s a phrase now) and eventually graduated on to using a plastic takeaway box with a sponge covered in baking parchment. As derisive as that sounds, many experienced painters still swear by building their own palettes and we even have a handy guide that shows you how to do just that. If you’re not sure if a wet palette is for you, this is a good way of testing the water.

Or, the slightly damp paper.

But for those who do not want to build one – or are willing to invest a bit more money – there is an ever-growing market of wet palettes to suit a variety of budgets and requirements. The latest addition to this particular stable of hobby products is the Urban Printer Wet Paint Palette.

Urban Printer Wet Paint Palette Review – Summary

The Urban Printer Wet Paint Palette is not a single product, but a range of wet palettes that come in a variety of different sizes. As these are 3D printed by the company on demand, they even offer a service that allows you to a request a custom size should you so desire.

Quoth the Urban Printer’s website: “Compact. Simple. Wet.”

Says it all, really.

Even so, we’re still going to do a full review.

Urban Printer Wet Paint Palette Review – Unboxing

This was not so much an unboxing as an unbagging as the palettes that Urban Printer kindly sent us for this review were carefully wrapped in order to protect them from damage. There was no box as these are items that are made to order.

Honestly, I think this is a good thing. This is a product that is made to order and mailed directly to the customer; there is no need for a full colour box designed to stand out from hundreds of other boxes in a hobby or game shop. It may be a happy accident in this case, but it’s good to see a company being careful about the amount of plastic and paper they’re using – especially when they’re dealing in plastic.

I was sent samples of each of the standard sizes the Urban Printer sells – the Mini, the Original and the Maxi (the Mini being the smallest and the Maxi the largest). The Mini measures 110mm x 190mm, the Original 150mm x 120mm, and the Maxi 150mm x 190mm.

All of the palettes – even the custom ones – have a height of 15mm.

I was also given the opportunity to utilise the custom order service that the company offers and had a palette measuring 150mm x 60mm printed.

The logic behind this was that I wanted to first of all see how well the company could produce a weird size. However, I also though it would be good to have a small palette that was complimentary in size to the Original and Maxi, thinking that I could use the custom to hold small amount of paints I wanted to keep separate from other paints. Namely, metallics.

Also included were a variety of cellulose sponges – the “wet” part of the palette.

Curiously, no paper or parchment was included. I reached out to the company for clarification on this point and the reason given was that they feel that people have their own preferences when it comes to the type of paper they use whilst painting. More on that later.

Finally, inside each palette was one of these:

Now, my dumb ass thought that this was some kind of gasket or platform for the sponge to sit on (I didn’t say my suggestion was good, ok?).

When I reached out to the company for clarification, I was informed that this was the “cutting guide” mentioned in each of the product descriptions on the site. When I saw this mentioned I had assumed it was in reference to a piece of literature the product came with.

It’s actually a stencil to allow you to accurately cut paper and sponges for your palette.

Urban Painter Wet Paint Palette Review – The Tray

Taking a leaf out of the Apple playbook, Urban Printer palettes have a very minimalist, no-frills aesthetic. I think this sort of style can be a bit polarising, but I think the appearance of a wet palette is largely of small concern.

My trusty Redgrass is covered in all sorts of stickers I’ve collected over the years and I’ve seen a lot of people do similar with their own.

When I was told that the palettes were 3D printed, I did groan a bit. Some people rave about 3D printing, but I’ve seen so many products that have that horrible grain to them that looks especially bad on models and scenery. Whilst there is a bit of a grain to these palettes, it’s nothing like the crappy towers that your mate prints in his garage.

This is a very professional product, very nicely finished, and the grain around the sides actually lends the palette a nice bit of texture.

Urban Painter Wet Paint Palette Review – The Lid

The lid is a really clever bit of design. Firstly, it fits perfectly into the tray so that the two line up completely without any overlap. Secondly, there is a lip around the inside of the tray that the lid clips into so that there is very little movement between the two when you pick it up.

If you knock or tip one of these palettes whilst closed, you don’t need to worry about the contents flying all over the place. The lack of a gasket on the inside for full air tightness may be a problem over time, but I didn’t experience any issues with the palettes drying out. They retain moisture very well because of how well they’ve been designed.

One of the things that really bothered me about the product was also the lid. I can only speak for myself, of course, but whenever I open up something like a wet palette I tuck the lid under the tray.

The trouble here is that there is no mechanism to allow the base to nest neatly on top of the lid. If you lean at all on the palette whilst you’re using it – which I sometimes do – it’s sliding all over the place.

This also makes the advantage of having a smaller palette – which is generally to save on space – something of a moot point. The lid has to go somewhere whilst you’re painting and it isn’t really a good idea to put it underneath as the tray just glides right off it.

Urban Painter Wet Paint Palette Review – The Sizes

What probably makes the Urban Printer stand out most of all is the variety of sizes the palette comes in.

The problem is that the variety of sizes are somewhat redundant.

The Maxi – the largest of the 3 ready-to-buy palettes available – measures 150mm x 190mm and is, therefore, closer to the approximate standard size seen throughout other palettes on the market.

As somebody who is often stuggling for space on my regular palette, my ears pricked up at the mention of custom sizes. I was disappointed to find that the absolute largest palette available was 200mm x 200mm – not very much bigger than The Maxi, really.

Urban Painter Wet Paint Palette Review – The Sizes

Pros	Cons
Custom Sizes Minimalist Aesthetic Clip-shut Lid Well Engineered	No Paper Many Redundant Sizes Comes with Regular Sponge Expensive

It’s a shame that the custom sizes don’t go up beyond the standard. I think the Urban Printer is on to something good with allowing people to choose what size of palette they want, but I think that the sort of person who wants a custom palette size is almost always going to want to go bigger.

That the palette comes with a supermarket cellulose sponge and no paper is a definite misstep. Without some sort of parchment or paper, it feels like an incomplete product and the cellulose sponge feels a bit cheeky.

Really, it feels as though you’re paying for a container when this is the sort of product that should be pretty close to ready to go out of the box. My feeling is that the sort of person who is happy to build their own wet palette would probably just repurpose a plastic container that suited their needs and not pay £14.99 for one.

As expensive a container as it may be, it is very well engineered. I was very impressed at the amount of moisture the palette retained over a week of rigorous use without the incorporation of a seal or a gasket.

The Urban Printer is on to something promising with their palette design and their vision for custom palette sizes, but they haven’t got there yet.

15% off Phrozen with code: “22PRFHDP15“

Our Affiliates / Hobby Stores

• UK: Element Games, The Outpost, Wayland Games, Mighty Lancer, Goblin Gaming, Forbidden Planet, Model Scenery Supplies, eBay, Amazon
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• Germany: Taschengelddieb
• Europe: eBay (DE), eBay (FR), eBay (ES), eBay (IT), Amazon
• Australia: eBay, Amazon
• Global: RedGrass Games, Warcolours

• 3D Printers: Phrozen 3D, Elegoo, Anycubic

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