I admit it: I’m a paint junkie. I have perhaps 200 bottles of paint on my workbench, including many artifacts from product lines long dead. I’m an inveterate experimenter when in comes to paint, ever on the lookout for the perfect pot of paint. As a result, it can be a total pain to actually find a specific bottle when I need it.

Like a lot of painters I’ve been through the classic stages of storage creep. First they just sat around loose. Then I went to a shoe box, then a bigger cardboard box. When I outgrew that I went to a big red toolbox. I was happy with that for a long time, but eventually my collection outgrew it, and then I had two toolboxes. I needed a better solution.

The problem wasn’t just the sheer bulk of my paint, I was having a devil of a time finding the exact bottle I needed at any given time. Every type of box I used shared the same problem. The pots sat down inside it, hiding the sides that held the labels and also gave a glimpse at the colors within. All that showed were the anonymous tops, and I had to rummage around endlessly to find a given color.

Closeup showing (L to R on the upper tier) old-style GW, Valeijo, P3, "bolter" GW, and Poly S pots

Some years ago at GenCon I happened to see somebody selling a revolutionary (to my mind) answer to my problem. A stack of round plastic trays, grooved to hold paint bottles and mounted on a “lazy susan” type base so they could be spun easily with one hand. With this arrangement the all-important sides of the paint bottles were easily visible, and thanks to the rotating nature of the carrousel, there was no “back row” of less accessible paints. I bought one and took it home.

The Paintier comes with “some assembly required” to mount the trays onto the central shaft and spinner base. The process is straightforward and painless, and offers an opportunity to choose between several different spacers to fit between the trays, allowing for some customization of the heights between them. I seem to recall the whole assembly process took about five or ten minutes.

Closeup of the top tier showing the size of the paint bottle notches and the holes for brushes

One thing I noticed immediately was the outstanding quality of the components. The trays are plastic, but it’s reassuringly heavyweight plastic. The central support is a substantial metal rod. The base rotates on proper ball bearings. You can hear them as you spin the rack, and it makes for a very smooth and elegant rotation. I have every confidence that I’ll be using this rack for many years to come.

Each tray is ringed with circular openings for paint pots. It should surprise nobody that they are sized precisely to fit the size and style of container in which Games Workshop packages their paint. GW pots fit these holes perfectly, as do many others like the old-style Reaper jars. The newer eyedropper-style bottles (like Vallejo and the new Reaper Master Series) will fit on the racks, but the combination of the bottles’ height and their relatively small bases make them a bit prone to tipping over if the carrousel is spun with much speed. Curiously, I’ve found the problem grows much more pronounced as one goes up the various tiers, so it may be a simple matter of physics. It’s a minor problem than can be somewhat reduced by crowding the bottles close together so they support one another, or by simply storing one’s shorter paint pots on the upper levels.

Strength test! Even loaded with over a hundred bottles of paint, you can pick it up by the center grip with nary a wobble.

Despite the build quality, the $50 price tag is going to be a deal-breaker for some. It’s true that that’s a fair bit of money to spend on something that does a job that can be filled by a shoebox. I don’t like spending money from my hobby budget on things that aren’t minis or paints either, but give how much time and aggravation the Paintier has saved me I personally think that it’s money well spent. I can’t think of anything on my workbench that gets more use except my Winsor & Newton brushes.

Finally, the Paintier is quite large. Fully assembled it stands between 15” and 18” tall (depending on the spacers you select) and is 12” in diameter. If you have a limited amount of work space, this may prove to be too big for you. If you consider how much of your space is consumed by chaotic piles of paint containers, however, you may find that setting up a carrousel actually saves you quite a lot of room. There are even holes to hold up to 16 paintbrushes, though I’ve never used them because the brushes end up too high and out of easy reach when I’m sitting at my workbench.

At the end of the day, the fact that I own two of these racks should adequately explain what I think of them. I really enjoy having my vast array of paints so easily accessible. That convenience comes with a substantial price tag attached, but I think the quality and durability of the Paintier unit makes it a good value for any painter who’s tired of struggling to find just the right paint in the middle of a project.

[Ed. Note: Paintier also makes a number of other versions of this product with varying numbers of tiers included. The Paintier 40 has two tiers, and the 100 and 120 models have five and six respectively. The latter two are only available directly from the Paintier website]

Pros: Makes paint easy to find, Works with a variety of paint bottles, Well-made

Cons: Some bottles fit better than others, Expensive, May be too big for some workspaces

Final Verdict: 4/5

MSRP: $50

Source: Paintier Products

Popularity: 13% [?]

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