Once you decide you want a custom paint-by-numbers kit, the next question is who to order from. A quick search returns dozens of companies — all with the same stock photos, the same promises and very different finished products.
We have spent enough time inside this industry to know exactly where the corners get cut. This article is an honest checklist of what separates a premium custom paint-by-numbers company from a disappointing one.
1. They Hand-Edit Every Design
The cheap end of the market runs your photo through an automatic filter and ships the result. That works for landscapes; it fails for faces and pets, where eyes turn into blurry blobs and fur loses every recognisable feature.
A serious custom company has a human designer review and adjust every conversion — cleaning up edges, sharpening eyes, simplifying backgrounds and balancing the colour palette. Ask whether designs are reviewed by a human before printing. If the answer is vague, assume they aren't.
2. They Show You a Preview Before You Pay
Premium companies let you preview the design generated from your photo before you commit to ordering. If a company only shows you a finished example after payment, you have no recourse when the result looks nothing like your dog.
The preview should be of your photo specifically, not a generic example.
3. They Print on Real Linen Canvas
Cheap kits print on thin, papery cotton blends that warp the moment paint touches them. Premium kits print on heavier linen canvas, pre-stretched or rolled, that holds paint cleanly and frames beautifully.
Canvas weight should be at least 280 gsm. Below that and you are essentially painting on a tea towel.
4. They Provide Numbered Acrylic Paint Pots
The paint matters more than people realise. Good kits include 24–36 pre-mixed acrylic paint pots that exactly match the numbered regions on your canvas. Cheap kits give you a tube of red, a tube of blue and an instruction to mix your own — which is fine for advanced painters and infuriating for everyone else.
5. They Include 3 Brushes, Not One Stiff Stick
A good kit ships with at least three brushes — fine, medium and broad — with proper wooden handles and bristles that don't shed. Cheap kits include one wide brush that makes detail work impossible.
6. They Print at the Right Difficulty
A good company calibrates the number of regions and colours to the canvas size. A 40×50 cm kit should have around 24 colours and several hundred regions. Too few and the painting looks blocky; too many and the regions become too small to paint accurately.
Some companies offer simplified versions for beginners or for residents in aged care — a sign they actually think about who is going to paint the kit.
7. They Have Real Photos From Real Customers
Stock renders are cheap to produce. Photos of customers' actual finished kits — uneven, imperfect, proudly displayed in real homes — are harder to fake. Look for companies that share customer-submitted finished pieces, not just glossy studio shots.
8. They Ship From a Location You Can Reach
A lot of cheap custom kits ship from overseas warehouses with three- to six-week lead times and unpredictable customs. Premium companies usually print closer to the customer — within Australia for Australian customers, for example — with one- to two-week turnaround and tracked delivery.
Always check the production and shipping timeline before ordering, especially for gift deadlines.
Red Flags to Watch For
Some warning signs turn up again and again. Any one of these is worth pausing over.
- No physical address. If you cannot find where the company actually is, you have nobody to chase when a kit arrives damaged or never arrives at all.
- No preview before printing. Paying first and seeing the design later removes your only chance to fix a bad conversion.
- Generic five-star reviews with no photos. Pages of glowing text with no finished paintings attached usually means the reviews were not written by customers.
- Sub-$40 "custom" kits. A linen canvas, two dozen acrylic pots, three brushes and a human designer cannot be covered at that price. Something has been cut, and it is usually the design work.
- Four to six week shipping. Long lead times almost always mean an overseas warehouse and no local support if something goes wrong. Check the timeline against your gift deadline before you order, and look at what a company actually stocks rather than what the ad promises.
Questions Worth Asking Before You Order
Is my design reviewed by a human before printing?
Can I preview the design from my photo before paying?
What canvas weight do you print on?
How many paint pots and what type of paint are included?
How many brushes, and what quality?
Where is the kit produced and shipped from?
What is your turnaround time end-to-end?
What happens if the design doesn't capture my subject?
A company that answers all of these clearly and quickly is almost always the right choice. A company that dodges any of them is almost always the wrong one.
The best custom paint-by-numbers company isn't necessarily the cheapest, the biggest or the loudest. It's the one that treats your photo like it matters — because to you, it does. Ask the questions above, and the right company becomes obvious very quickly.
Where we sit: full disclosure, we make these kits, so treat this as our own view rather than a neutral verdict. Be Artistic Club is Australian-run. Every kit ships with a stretched linen canvas, premium acrylic pots and three brushes, the preview is free, and you only pay once you approve the design. If that lines up with the checklist above, you can upload a photo and see the preview. If another company answers the questions better, go with them.
— Be Artistic Club