Free Warhammer / D&D miniature paint mixer. Enter a custom ratio (e.g. 3 drops A : 1 drop B : 2 water) and your army size; outputs total drops needed without drying out and a printable recipe card.
Built and maintained by Paul Clark, Redmoon Software
Use before mixing a custom shade for a project so you don't run out halfway through (or dry out unused paint by mixing too much).
Tutorials often give ratios without volumes. This tool turns "3:1 mix" into actual drop counts for your army size.
To cover 20 infantrys in basecoat, mix exactly 8 drops of Color A with 3 drops of Color B and 6 drops water.
Drops-per-model is derived from miniature scale (infantry / monster / terrain) and coverage style (basecoat / layer / drybrush).
Your recipe ratio (e.g., 3 drops A : 1 drop B : 2 water) is scaled to the total drops needed for the whole army.
One drop ≈ 0.05 ml from a standard hobby dropper.
Roughly 0.05 ml from a standard hobby paint dropper. The total estimate is conservative.
Standard 28mm infantry. Larger models (vehicles, monsters) and terrain pieces are scaled with multipliers.
Mixing per model makes it nearly impossible to reproduce the exact same shade twice, causing visible color drift across a unit. Batching the whole army from one ratio keeps every miniature consistent.
Thinning with water increases volume and smooths brush strokes but reduces opacity, so heavily watered mixes need more coats. Keep the same water ratio across the batch so coverage stays even from the first model to the last.
Input
20 infantry models, basecoat, 3:1:2 ratio.
Output
~16 total drops needed.
20 × 0.8 drops/model = 16 total. With a 3:1:2 mix, that's 8 drops of color A, 3 of color B, 5 of water/thinner — round up for waste.
Paint mixes subtractively: each pigment absorbs part of the spectrum, so combining them removes more light than either alone. That is why every mix trends darker and less saturated than its parents, and why mixing complements produces mud rather than a vivid neutral.
It is the opposite of the additive mixing screens use, which is the source of most surprises when someone reasons about paint from RGB experience.
Pigments differ enormously in tinting strength. Phthalo blue will overwhelm a mix at a fraction of the ratio that titanium white needs to shift it, so a nominal 1:1 by volume is rarely 1:1 in effect. Add strong pigments in small increments rather than to a calculated ratio.
Opacity matters as much as hue. An opaque pigment covers what is beneath it while a transparent one glazes, and two paints of identical colour can behave completely differently over a dark ground. Mix a test swatch and let it dry before committing — many paints shift value as they dry, acrylics most noticeably.
Capes, skirts, armor → yards / meters needed.
Maker & workshopNote divisions in ms / Hz for any tempo.
Maker & workshopReal feet → 28mm, 32mm, HO, 1:35 model size.
Maker & workshopMold dimensions → resin volume, weight, and cost.