🖌️ Miniature Paint Coverage Estimator
Enter your paint bottle volume and roughly how much paint you use per miniature to estimate how many miniatures one bottle will cover.
Bottle volume divided by usage, rounded down
miniatures = floor(bottle ml / ml per miniature)The defaults - a 12 ml pot at 0.3 ml a model - give exactly 40 miniatures. The result is rounded down because half a painted model is not a painted model.
| Per model | 12 ml pot | 17 ml | 18 ml |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0.15 ml | 80 | 113 | 120 |
| 0.30 ml | 40 | 56 | 60 |
| 0.50 ml | 24 | 34 | 36 |
| 0.60 ml | 20 | 28 | 30 |
Estimating your own ml per model
Almost none of that 0.3 ml ends up on the figure. A 28 mm infantry model has roughly 18 cm² of surface, and a dried acrylic film about 25 microns thick over all of it is 18 × 0.0025 = 0.045 cm³, or 0.045 ml. The rest is thinning water, paint left on the palette and what dries in the brush.
- Use 0.15 ml for a spot colour - eyes, a belt, metal trim.
- Use 0.3 ml for a main armour or cloak colour covering most of the model, in two thin coats.
- Use 0.5-0.6 ml for cavalry, monsters and vehicles, or for any colour you spray through an airbrush, where overspray dominates.
Frequently asked questions
How many miniatures can you paint with one pot of paint?
Around 40 models per 12 ml pot as a main colour, or 80 if it is a detail colour used on a small area. An 18 ml dropper bottle covers about 60 models at the same rate.
How much paint does one miniature actually use?
Less than a tenth of what leaves the bottle. The dried film on a 28 mm model is roughly 0.045 ml; palette waste, thinning water and brush cleaning account for the rest of a 0.3 ml allowance.
Why did my paint run out before I finished the unit?
Usually loss rather than use. Paint pumped onto a dry palette skins in minutes, and airbrushing puts a large share of the cup into the air and onto the booth filter. A wet palette and mixing smaller amounts recover most of it.