Best Brushes for Acrylic Painting: The Set You Need, Shapes, and Bristles

How to Restore Your Ruined Paintbrushes 3:34

The best brushes for acrylic painting are quality synthetic brushes in a range of shapes and sizes, built to survive what acrylic demands: fast drying paint, constant rinsing, and bold handling. You don’t need a huge box of them. Three well chosen brushes will carry you through your first paintings, and a set of five to eight covers nearly everything acrylic will ever ask of you.

Each brush serves a unique purpose, and understanding those purposes turns the overwhelming wall at the art store into a short list. The decisions that matter are what goes in your set, bristle type, shape, size, handle length, and quality. Then comes the part most guides skip: how you hold, load, and care for the brushes you choose.

What should a set of acrylic brushes include?

A starter set of acrylic brushes needs three things: a big fat brush for coverage, a medium filbert for blending, and one or two smaller brushes for detail. That’s the minimum we ask for in our Intro to Acrylics lessons.

• A big flat, about two inches wide. This lays in backgrounds and large areas fast. If you’re on a budget, a chip brush from the hardware store will get you by. It isn’t nearly as nice, but it works.
• A medium filbert. This is the one to take seriously. It blends, softens edges, and makes a surprising range of marks depending on how hard you press.
• One or two small detail brushes. A small round handles fine lines, eyes, leaves, and the last touches.

When you’re ready to grow the set, add a medium flat for crisp edges, a fan for soft backgrounds and foliage, and a liner (also called a script or rigger brush) for long, fine lines. That’s five to eight brushes, and it covers everything from broad washes to the smallest detail. More brushes do give you more freedom, and plenty of artists love collecting them. But a small set you know well beats a big set you never learn.

Should you choose synthetic or natural bristles for acrylics?

Synthetic bristles are the better choice for most acrylic painters. Made from nylon or polyester, they are resilient, hold their shape through session after session, and clean up easily. They give smooth, even strokes, which makes them ideal for detailed work, and they serve beginners and experienced artists equally well.

Natural bristles, sourced from animal hair such as hog, sable, or squirrel, hold more paint and create richer textures. A hog bristle brush is rougher to the touch and stiffer than a soft synthetic, so it leaves more texture in the stroke, which is useful when you want a broken, scumbled blend. Natural hair also asks for more careful handling in a medium as hard on bristles as acrylic. If you work in both media, it helps to know how differently they treat a brush: the five key differences between acrylics and oil paint are worth understanding before you buy one set for everything.

Which brush shapes do you actually need?

Seven shapes cover nearly everything acrylic painting will ask of you: round, flat, bright, filbert, angle, fan, and liner.

• Round: the pointed tip gives you fine lines, precise detailing, outlining, and smooth washes. Twirl it in your paint and it comes back to a point.
• Flat: a square end with long bristles for bold strokes, filling large areas, and cutting crisp edges. Use the edge to carve a clean line.
• Bright: like a flat but with shorter bristles, giving you extra control for short, deliberate strokes and tight spaces.
• Filbert: the rounded edge merges the best of flat and round. Essential for blending, soft edges, and varied strokes. Press lightly for a thin petal shape, press down for a fuller one.
• Angle: slanted bristles for painting curves, angled shapes, and dynamic lines with precision and flexibility.
• Fan: spread bristles made for blending backgrounds, building texture, and painting elements like foliage and clouds.
• Liner (script or rigger): long, thin bristles that hold enough paint for a long unbroken line. Reach for it for fur, hair, branches, and signatures.

Choose shapes by what you’re painting. Rounder brushes like the round and filbert suit portraits and flowers. Square brushes suit cities, architecture, and anything with angular planes. Then mix them: a square stroke laid over a round one adds variety, and variety is what makes a painting look sophisticated. And when no bristle gives you the texture you’re after, put the brush down entirely: palette knife painting techniques open a whole different vocabulary of marks.

Should you buy a brush set or individual brushes?

Buy a set when it covers the shapes you need, and buy individually when a set pads its count with near duplicates. A box of fifteen brushes that are mostly small rounds in slightly different sizes gives you less to work with than five brushes in five different shapes.

When you look at any set, check four things:

1. Shape coverage. At least a large flat, a filbert, and a small round. A liner and a fan are a bonus.
2. Bristles that hold their shape. Interlocked bristles return to a clean edge or point instead of splaying.
3. A tight ferrule. The metal collar should not wiggle on the handle, or the brush will shed and come apart.
4. A mix of soft and firm. Soft synthetics for smooth passages, one or two firmer brushes for texture.

What is the best blending brush for acrylic painting?

A filbert is the best all-purpose blending brush for acrylics, and a fan brush is the best choice for blending backgrounds. The filbert’s rounded edge lets you marry two areas of color without leaving a hard line, which is why it earns a permanent spot in most kits. The fan’s spread bristles feather color softly, which suits skies, atmosphere, and foliage.

Acrylic dries fast, so blending rewards you for working while the paint is still wet and for keeping your color at a workable consistency. If your paint drags or leaves harsh streaks, learning how to thin acrylic paint will do as much for your blending as any brush.

What brush sizes and handle lengths should you buy?

Build your kit across three size ranges. Small brushes (sizes 0 to 2) are tailored for fine details and intricate work. Medium brushes (sizes 4 to 8) are the workhorses of your collection, versatile enough for most of what a painting needs. Large brushes (size 10 and above, plus that two inch flat) cover big areas and make bold, expressive strokes.

Handle length matters more than most beginners expect. Short handles suit fine detail and close work, offering superior control and precision. Long handles suit easel painting and broad strokes, giving you a greater range of motion and enough distance from the canvas to see the whole painting while you work.

Let your techniques guide the rest. If you glaze, dry brush, or build impasto passages, all covered in our guide to painting techniques, choose brushes designed for those methods, and match your brushes to the nature of your projects, whether detailed illustration or large expressive canvases.

How do you hold and load an acrylic brush?

Hold the brush in the middle most of the time, move closer to the ferrule for control, and hold it at the very end for long, fluid lines. Where you grip changes the mark. Near the bristles you press harder and control more. At the end you press lighter, and with a flick of the wrist a medium brush can pull a surprisingly thin, straight line. It feels like you’ve lost control. Trust it anyway.

How much paint you load matters just as much:

• A normal load: an even coat on both sides of the brush, not heaped, not so thin you have to push to get paint off. Turn the brush as you paint so you use both sides.
• A heavy load: paint piled on until the brush looks misshapen. Save this for the end of a painting, for highlights and anything you want to pull forward, where the raised stroke catches light.
• A light, dry load: very little paint on a dry brush, for dry brushing and scumbled blends that break over the texture of the canvas.

Practice on scrap paper: upstrokes, downstrokes, side strokes, and diagonals, then the same strokes with the brush turned on its side. The one habit to avoid is what our instructors call stabbing and dabbing, where you fall into a trance and repeat the same little mark over and over for leaves or grass. Nature is full of variety, so let your strokes vary too, or the painting goes flat. Dry brushing and stumbling, the two blending strokes that add real sophistication, are taught step by step, with demonstrations, in the Intro to Acrylics lessons of the 2-Week Challenge.

Which acrylic paint brushes do professionals use?

Professional artists choose brushes that keep their shape: interlocked bristles, securely attached ferrules, and a comfortable grip. Interlocking matters more than any single feature. Interlocked bristles are formed into their shape at the ferrule, so the brush returns to a clean edge or point instead of splaying out the way cheaper brushes do.

Several brands have earned their reputations. Winsor & Newton offers high quality brushes in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. Princeton makes durable, affordable brushes that suit artists at any stage. Royal & Langnickel is known for versatile, long lasting brushes, and Da Vinci stands for fine craftsmanship and premium materials at the professional end.

At Milan Art, after years of frustration over the lack of affordable quality brushes, we designed our own. Our FEARLESS Mixed Media Brush Set pairs soft and firm artist brushes that handle everything from acrylic and watercolor to inks and the thickest oils, with colored handle tips so you can assign each brush a job and stay in your right brain while you paint. It’s the set we use for all our acrylic and mixed media paintings. The set includes the Interlock Bronze B-6, Interlock Bronze B-12, Med. Floater, Eye of the Tiger 640 Oval, Eye of the Tiger 620 Oval 8, Faux Sable 172 Round 8, Faux Sable 172 Jumbo 16, and 1422 Bristle/Ox 2″. You can buy the brushes as a set, individually, or in our acrylic painting kits.

On price, spend good money on good brushes when you can. Cheap brushes are hard to learn with: they won’t hold their shape, and they don’t hold or deliver paint properly, so the marks you’re practicing simply won’t happen. If the budget is tight, start with a basic set that covers a variety of shapes and sizes, then upgrade the brushes you reach for most.

How do you clean and care for acrylic brushes?

Clean your brushes between colors that would make mud, and thoroughly at the end of every session. Never leave them soaking. Water swells the wooden handle until it separates from the ferrule, and the bristles fray, so a brush left in the jar overnight is often a brush you’ve lost.

Between colors: if the next color is related (yellow to orange to red), keep going without rinsing. If it isn’t (orange to blue), clean the brush fully or you’ll mix brown mud. Don’t be dainty about it. Knock the brush against the bottom of your water jar to loosen all the paint, wipe the excess water off on the rim, then finish in a paper towel. The paper towel is where it really gets clean, and it keeps muddy rinse water out of your next color. Swap in clean water whenever the jar gets murky.

At the end of the day:

1. Rinse each brush under the faucet with plain water until no paint remains in the nooks at the base of the bristles.
2. Reshape the bristles with your fingers while they’re wet.
3. Dry and store brushes bristles up in an empty jar or cup, or lying flat. Stored bristles down, they dry bent, and a bent brush stays bent.

A mason jar is all you need to hold them. Keeping the tips up and unsquished matters more than any fancy holder.

Brushes can also be rescued. If dried paint has crusted a brush, rubbing alcohol will break it up. If a brush seems beyond saving, soak it overnight in Murphy’s Oil Soap before you throw it away; it often comes back. Natural bristle brushes benefit from regular conditioning with a brush cleaner or mild conditioner to stay soft and pliable. A splayed, crusty brush makes mud and ragged edges, and tired tools are one of the easiest ways to end up ruining paintings that started well.

How do you build a brush kit that grows with you?

The brushes you choose have a significant impact on the paintings you’re able to create. They can mean the difference between an okay painting and a potential masterwork. Start with three, grow to a set of five to eight that covers the shapes, buy the best quality you can afford, and treat your brushes like the instruments they are.

Then go use them. Load a filbert, hold it somewhere new, make a stroke you’ve never made before, and see where it leads. No two artists lay down a brushstroke the same way, and that difference is what makes your work yours. When you’re ready to go deeper into what those brushes can do, our painting techniques hub is full of next steps.

Frequently asked questions

What should a set of acrylic brushes include?

At minimum, a big flat brush about two inches wide for covering large areas, a medium filbert for blending and soft edges, and one or two small rounds for detail. A fuller set of five to eight adds a medium flat, a fan brush, and a liner or script brush for fine lines.

How many brushes do you need for acrylic painting?

Three is enough to start: a large flat, a medium filbert, and a small detail brush. Most painters settle at five to eight brushes across different shapes and sizes. Variety of shape matters more than the number of brushes in the box.

Are synthetic brushes good for acrylic paint?

Yes. Synthetic bristles made from nylon or polyester are resilient, hold their shape, and clean up easily, which suits the fast drying and constant rinsing acrylics demand. They give smooth, even strokes and serve beginners and professionals equally well.

Can you use the same brushes for acrylics and oils?

Quality mixed media brushes can handle both. Clean them thoroughly between media, because dried acrylic is hard to remove and oil residue resists water. A well made set that mixes soft and firm bristles can cover everything from inks and watercolor to thick oils.

How often should you clean acrylic paint brushes?

Every session, and between colors that would make mud if they mixed. At the end of the day, rinse under the faucet until no paint is left at the base of the bristles, reshape them while wet, and dry them bristles up. Never leave brushes soaking overnight.

When should you replace an acrylic brush?

Replace a brush when it no longer returns to its shape after cleaning and reshaping, or when the bristles have come loose from the ferrule. Try a rescue first: rubbing alcohol breaks up dried acrylic, and an overnight soak in Murphy's Oil Soap often revives a brush that looks finished.

Should beginners buy expensive brushes?

Start with a basic set that covers a variety of shapes and sizes, then invest in higher quality brushes as your skills grow. Cheap brushes lose their shape and do not hold or deliver paint well, and their combined cost often equals one quality brush that would have lasted for years.