Acrylic Pour Paint Calculator
Use this free paint pour calculator to find out how much paint you need for your acrylic pour. Enter your surface size and shape, pick your paint thickness and mix ratio, and it tells you how much paint and pouring medium to mix for each color not just for the whole pour.
Unit of measure?
How thick will your paint be?
Painting surface shape:
Length ()
Width ()
Diameter ()
Depth ()
Paint needed:
Measurement
# Of Paints
Total Paint Needed
Pouring Mix Ratio ? Paint : Pouring Medium 1 : Pouring Medium 2. Select a preset or enter a custom ratio.
Amount
| Quantity | Paint | PM1 ? Pouring Medium 1 — your primary pouring medium (e.g. Floetrol, GAC800). | PM2 ? Pouring Medium 2 — a secondary additive if your mix ratio uses one. | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Total | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | |
Total Amount Of Paint:
Paint per Color:
PM1 per Color ? Pouring Medium 1 — your primary pouring medium (e.g. Floetrol, GAC800). :
PM2 per Color ? Pouring Medium 2 — a secondary additive, used when your mix ratio has a third component. :
One of the most frustrating issues I’ve had as a new acrylic pour artist was figuring out exactly how much paint I need for my acrylic pour.
Too much and you push off the outside of your design while tilting.
Too little and you can’t cover your painting surface.
How does the calculator work out how much paint you need?
How much paint do you need for an acrylic pour? I start with 1 ounce of paint for every 25 square inches of surface, which is 0.04 ounces per square inch. In metric, that is about 0.18 milliliters per square centimeter. “Paint” here means the finished mix, with your pouring medium already added.
The surface area includes the sides, which most people forget. An 8 x 10 inch canvas with half-inch sides is 80 square inches on top plus 18 on the sides, for 98 square inches. Divide by 25 and you need about 4 ounces of mixed paint. With four colors, that is 1 ounce of each.
The calculator does that math for rectangles, circles, ovals, triangles, and hexagons. It then adjusts for how thick your paint is (10% up or down), and splits the total into paint and pouring medium for each color based on your mix ratio.
This amount includes both any base coat and all your colors. Normally I use 60% of the total mixed paint for the base coat and the rest for the colors. A dutch pour is an example where I would use this.
I usually weigh my paints and I use grams when doing small batches or ounces in larger batches. There are about 30 grams per ounce.
Please keep in mind that every pour is going to be slightly different based on the medium, the paints, the pouring surface, temperature, etc. More information about these factors can be found in this article: How Much Paint to Use for an Acrylic Pour.
I encourage you to keep track of how much paint you use for your pouring style and adjust the amounts as necessary. I created the PourVault mobile app to let you log all your pours with pictures, ratios, paints, and all your observations so they are easily accessible to reference when you do similar pours in the future.
Don’t forget to download my acrylic paint calculator cheat sheet that has common canvas sizes and the amount of paint you need for each. Use it as a quick reference in your studio.