The Army Painter Paint Mixing Empty Dropper Bottles, 12 mL, Plastic Dropper Bottles for Acrylic Paint Review (2026)

What it is

The Army Painter Paint Mixing Empty Dropper Bottles come as a pack of six 12mL plastic bottles, according to the brand's own product page and matching retailer listings for this item, rather than being sold as a single bottle. Each bottle has a fine-point dropper tip built for dispensing small, controlled amounts of paint, and a screw-on lid that snaps the dropper insert into place to help reduce leaking compared with a simple twist-top pot. The bottles are designed to be reused repeatedly once emptied and cleaned, rather than being a single-use container, and each bottle has space on the label to write down what was mixed inside for future reference.

Why custom mix storage matters

The main purpose of bottles like this is decanting and custom mixing: pouring a small amount of paint from a larger pot into one of these bottles, then blending in other colors to create a custom shade that can be saved and reused later rather than re-mixed from scratch every time it is needed. This matters for painters working on army-scale projects, where matching an exact custom color across dozens of miniatures over weeks or months would otherwise mean carefully re-eyeballing the same ratio each time. The dropper tip also helps control exactly how much paint is applied to a wet palette or mixing surface, cutting down on wasted paint compared with pouring straight from a wider-mouthed pot.

The included mixing balls

According to the brand's own product page for this item, each bottle in the pack comes pre-loaded with two mixing balls already inside, which are small agitators that help remix separated pigment back into suspension when the bottle is shaken before use. This is worth noting because it means the bottles are ready to fill and use directly out of the pack rather than needing separate mixing balls bought and added before the bottles are functional. Mixing balls are commonly sold separately as their own product for painters who want extras or need to restock, but this specific bottle pack already includes a starting set built in.

Where six bottles may not be enough

With six bottles per pack, the set is sized for a handful of custom mixes rather than an extensive personal color library. Painters who regularly blend and save many different custom shades, which is common among people painting large armies with varied unit colors, may find six bottles fill up quickly and need to buy a second pack or two to have enough on hand. The 12mL size is also modest, suiting small batch mixes rather than large volumes of a single custom color, so painters planning to mix and store a big batch of one shade may prefer a larger container instead.

Who should buy it

This pack fits painters who mix their own custom paint shades and want a reliable, reusable way to store and label them for later use, especially anyone maintaining consistent colors across an army painted over an extended period. The built-in mixing balls mean the bottles are ready to use without any separate purchase. It is a weaker fit for painters who need to store many different custom colors at once, since six bottles will likely need supplementing with additional packs, or for anyone who only occasionally mixes paint and would get little use from a dedicated set of storage bottles.

Frequently asked questions