Oil vs acrylic: which is right for you?
It is one of the most common questions asked by anyone starting to paint, and one of the least helpfully answered. Most guides on the subject treat oil and acrylic as competitors, declare one a winner, and send you on your way. The reality is more useful than that — oil and acrylic are genuinely different mediums that suit different approaches, different working styles, and different intentions, and understanding those differences clearly is what allows you to make the right choice for how you actually want to paint.
This guide does not have a winner. It has a clear, honest comparison of what each medium does well, where each one has genuine limitations, and a straightforward framework for deciding which is right for you — or whether, as many painters do, you want to work with both.
We stock both mediums at Craft and Canvas: Wallace Seymour artist grade oils in 40ml tubes from £9.95, Sennelier Abstract acrylics at £3.95 per tube, and Daler-Rowney System 3 acrylics at £4.70 per tube.
The fundamental difference
Oil paint is pigment suspended in a drying oil — traditionally linseed, though walnut, safflower, and others are also used. It dries through a chemical process called oxidation, which is slow. A thin oil painting layer may take one to three days to be touch-dry; thicker passages can take weeks or even months to cure fully. This slowness is both the medium's greatest strength and its most significant practical challenge.
Acrylic paint is pigment suspended in an acrylic polymer emulsion — a water-based synthetic binder. It dries through evaporation of water, which is fast. A thin acrylic layer can be touch-dry in minutes; even a heavily painted passage is usually dry within an hour or two at room temperature. This speed is acrylic's defining practical advantage and also, for some types of painting, its most significant limitation.
Everything else that distinguishes the two mediums flows from this single fundamental difference in drying time.
What oils do better
Blending. Because oil paint stays wet and workable for hours, colours blend into each other on the canvas with an ease and smoothness that acrylic simply cannot match. Smooth tonal gradations — the kind seen in portrait painting, in atmospheric landscape skies, in the soft modelling of form in strong light — are achieved with oil paint almost effortlessly. With acrylic the same results require considerable technical skill and speed, or the use of retarder mediums to extend the working time.
Colour fidelity. Oil paint looks essentially the same wet and dry. What you mix on the palette is what you get on the canvas once cured. Acrylic paint dries slightly darker than it appears wet — sometimes significantly so in tints and lighter colours. This colour shift means that achieving a specific, repeatable colour with acrylics requires experience and compensation. With oils, the colour you see while painting is the colour of the finished work.
Surface quality and luminosity. Oil paint, particularly artist grade paint with high pigment loads like Wallace Seymour, has a depth, richness, and luminosity that many painters find unmatched by any other medium. The oil binder gives colours a particular translucency and inner glow that is especially pronounced in glazed and layered passages. Five centuries of masterworks in oil are testament to what the medium is capable of at its best.
Working time and forgivability. The slow drying of oil paint, which beginners often find frustrating, is actually one of the medium's most forgiving qualities. Mistakes can be wiped off with a rag while the paint is still wet. Passages can be reworked, adjusted, and refined over hours. Nothing is irreversible until you choose to make it so.
Textural quality. Heavy oil paint applied with a brush or palette knife holds its marks and three-dimensional texture as it dries, in a way that thicker acrylic passages sometimes do not. Impasto oil painting — building thick, sculptural surface texture — has a physical presence and quality that is very difficult to replicate with acrylics without the addition of gel mediums.
What acrylics do better
Speed and layering. Because acrylic dries so fast, multiple layers can be built up in a single session. Underpainting, blocking in, detailed work, and glazing can all happen in the same sitting without waiting for layers to cure. For painters who work quickly, who enjoy building up complex layered structures, or who simply cannot accommodate the slow pace of oil drying, acrylic is transformative.
Simplicity of setup and cleanup. Acrylic paint thins with water, brushes clean with water, and spillages clean up easily while wet. There are no solvents to manage, no ventilation requirements beyond a reasonably aired room, and no specialist cleaning materials needed. This makes acrylic considerably more practical for home studios, for painting with children, and for anyone who wants to paint without the additional complexity of oils.
Versatility of surface. Acrylic will adhere to almost any clean, grease-free surface — canvas, canvas board, paper, wood, metal, fabric, walls. Oil paint requires a properly primed, non-absorbent surface and will not adhere reliably to many of the surfaces acrylic handles without difficulty. For painters who want to work on non-standard surfaces or experiment with mixed media, acrylic is the natural choice.
Mixed media compatibility. Acrylic paint can be used as a ground or underpainting beneath oil paint — this is a legitimate and widely used technique, since acrylic dries quickly and provides a stable flexible surface for oil layers on top. The reverse does not work: oil paint must never be applied beneath acrylic, as the acrylic film cannot adhere properly to an oily surface and will crack and peel over time.
Cost of entry. Starting with acrylics requires less initial investment than starting with oils. You need paints, brushes, a surface, and a jar of water. Starting with oils adds solvents or oil-based mediums and requires more care around brush cleaning and ventilation. At Craft and Canvas, Sennelier Abstract acrylics at £3.95 per tube make a very capable beginner acrylic palette accessible for well under £40.
The honest limitations of each
Oil's honest limitations: Slow drying is a genuine practical inconvenience for painters who want to build layers quickly or who cannot leave paintings to dry undisturbed. Solvents add complexity, cost, and require ventilation — though low-odour alternatives are widely available and some painters work with oil paint using only soap and water for cleaning, avoiding solvents entirely. Oil painting requires more understanding of the fat over lean principle and drying time differences between pigments to avoid technical problems in finished work.
Acrylic's honest limitations: Fast drying is acrylic's defining challenge as well as its advantage. Blending is significantly harder than with oils, and achieving smooth, seamless tonal transitions requires practice and often the use of retarder medium. Colour shift between wet and dry can be frustrating until compensated for through experience. Some painters find the dried acrylic film slightly plastic in quality compared to the surface of an oil painting, though high quality acrylics like Sennelier Abstract minimise this considerably.
Which should you choose?
Rather than a definitive answer, here are the questions that lead to the right choice for you specifically.
Choose oils if: you want the richest, most luminous surface quality; you paint slowly and deliberately; blending and smooth tonal transitions are central to your work; you are drawn to portrait painting, figurative work, or landscape painting in a traditional manner; you are not put off by the additional materials required; or you are simply drawn to the medium and its history.
Choose acrylics if: you want to paint quickly and build multiple layers in a single session; you have limited space or ventilation; you are painting with children or in a context where solvents are impractical; you want to experiment with mixed media, textured surfaces, or non-standard painting supports; or you want the simplest possible setup to get started.
Consider working with both if: you want to use the speed and flexibility of acrylics for underpainting and early stages, and the richness and blendability of oils for upper layers and finishing; or if you simply enjoy both mediums and do not want to restrict yourself to one.
Many painters work exclusively in one medium throughout their career. Many others move freely between both depending on what a specific painting requires. There is no wrong answer.
Frequently asked questions
Is oil painting harder than acrylic for beginners? This is genuinely debatable. Acrylics are simpler to set up and clean up, which makes them more immediately accessible. But oil paint's slow drying time, which many beginners see as a disadvantage, is actually very forgiving — mistakes can be wiped off easily and passages can be reworked at length. Many painters find oils easier to blend and control once they are comfortable with the medium's pace.
Can I use the same brushes for both oil and acrylic? Not ideally. Oil paint requires cleaning with solvent, which can be harsh on synthetic brushes designed for water-based media. Acrylic paint, if allowed to dry in a brush, is very difficult to remove. Keeping separate brushes for each medium is recommended. Pro Arte Bristlene synthetic brushes work well for oils; the Pro Arte Scholacryl range is designed specifically for acrylics.
Can I paint acrylic over oil? No — acrylic paint cannot adhere properly to an oily surface and will crack or peel over time. Painting oil over acrylic is fine, as long as the acrylic layer is fully dry. Many painters use a quick-drying acrylic underpainting as a base for subsequent oil layers.
Do oils yellow over time? Some oil paints — particularly those made with linseed oil — can yellow slightly over time, especially in dark conditions. This is most noticeable in light or white areas. Using sunflower or safflower oil-based whites, or a non-yellowing varnish, minimises this. Wallace Seymour oils use English cold-pressed linseed oil which is lighter in colour and considered more stable than refined alternatives.
Which medium is better for large paintings? Both work well at large scale, but oil has a practical advantage in that it stays wet long enough to work across a large canvas without drying before you return to it. For very large acrylic paintings, keeping the palette moist with a stay-wet palette and working quickly in sections is necessary. Adding a retarder medium to acrylic paint also extends the working time usefully for larger work.
Which medium lasts longer? Both can produce paintings of extraordinary longevity when used with quality materials on properly prepared surfaces. Oil paintings have a five-century track record of durability at their best. High quality acrylic paintings are considered comparably stable — acrylic polymer films are chemically very stable — though the medium is only around seventy years old so its long-term behaviour is still being observed.
Shop at Craft and Canvas
We stock Wallace Seymour artist grade oils in 40ml tubes — Series 1 and 2 from £9.95, Series 3 and above from £16.20 — alongside Sennelier Abstract acrylics at £3.95 per tube and Daler-Rowney System 3 at £4.70 per tube, at our Hebden Bridge shop and online at craftandcanvas.co.uk. If you are not sure which to start with, come in and we will help you work it out.
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