Calore 72 Colored Pencils Review: A Budget Set With Blender and Burnisher Included

Introduction

Calore has a very long list of colored pencil sets on the market, and telling one set apart from another is genuinely difficult. This 72-piece tin caught my attention for two reasons: it includes both a colorless blender and a colorless burnisher, something I have rarely seen bundled in a budget set, and the tin is covered in bold claims, including “artist quality” and “expert”, that I wanted to put to the test.

The short version: as pencils to actually use, these are enjoyable. As marketing, the tin oversells them considerably. Let me walk through both sides.

What Is in the Set

The 72 pencils arrive in plastic trays inside a metal tin, laid out in three tiers. The top tier covers yellows and yellow ochres, peachy pale pinks, magentas, oranges and the darker reds. The middle tier holds lighter and darker blues along with a nice selection of greens. The bottom tier moves into darker greens, purples, earth tones like Walnut Brown and Van Dyk Brown, and finishes with metallic gold and silver, a warm gray, a cool gray, ivory black, and the two colorless pencils: the blender and the burnisher.

Along the top of the tin you will find the usual marketing wording: 72 unique colors, artist quality, 4 mm lead, blendable oil-based lead, soft smooth core, rich and vibrant colors, break resistant, round barrel, acid-free and non-toxic. Take all of that with a pinch of salt. Words like “expert” and “artist quality” printed on the barrels are marketing, not a guarantee of professional-grade performance, and newer artists in particular should not read too much into them.

One genuinely useful inclusion is a card stock color chart for laying out your own swatches. It is decent paper, and several budget brands now do this. The inside of the tin also has a printed swatch, but treat it cautiously: those are laser printed rather than done with the actual pencils, so they only give a rough idea of the colors.

Pencil Design and Build

The core measures around 4 mm as stated, in a round barrel of roughly 7.9 mm. The pencils feel well weighted and balanced. Half the barrel is natural wood and the other half shows the pigment color, separated by a silver band. The brand name runs along one side with “expert” printed on the end, the color name on the opposite side, alongside a lightfast rating and an alpha-numeric code matching the pigment inside.

The Lightfast Ratings Problem

Here is where things get strange. The tin includes its own lightfast legend: one star for “extremely lightfast”, two stars for “good lightfast”, three stars for “lightfast”, four stars for “limited lightfast”, and five stars for “less lightfast”. The wording alone is confusing, but the distribution is worse: not a single pencil in the set carries one or two stars. Ten pencils have three stars, 32 have four, and 30 have five.

In other words, by the brand’s own legend, none of these pencils qualify as genuinely lightfast. Compared with the Blue Wool or ASTM systems used by sets like Caran d’Ache Luminance or Derwent Lightfast, where most pencils sit at the top of the scale, this legend does not correspond to anything meaningful. My advice: ignore the lightfast stars entirely. If archival permanence matters for your work, this is not the set for it.

Color Selection and Swatches

On paper, the palette is genuinely appealing. I swatched the set on Strathmore 300 series Bristol vellum, and the range includes a strong line-up of yellows such as Yellow Ochre Deep, attractive peachy pinks, and very good reds including Crimson Lake, Carmine Red and Scarlet. Cloud Blue is the lightest blue, Indigo is beautifully dark, and the greens section offers olive tones like Olive Green, Leaf Green and Oxide of Chrome Green alongside a lovely Teal Green, Light Aqua, and a gray-green Forest Green that works wonderfully for botanicals. The purples include a gorgeous Oyster that makes a great shadow tone, and the earth tones run from Terra Cotta and Brown Ochre through Sepia, Walnut Brown and a rich Van Dyk Brown.

On black paper, the set is a mixed bag. Lemon Yellow is fairly translucent while Ultramarine Blue Light is quite opaque, Cherry Red holds up surprisingly well, and the white is notably opaque for a budget set, though not on the level of Derwent Chinese White. Artists who prefer thick, opaque pencils versus more translucent ones will read that differently, which is fine; it simply depends on your style.

Layering and Blending Performance

Layering was the pleasant surprise of this review. Even on Bristol vellum, which is not a particularly toothy paper, the pencils layered well. In my five-layer test there was a clear distinction between each layer, and heavy application showed genuinely vibrant, well-saturated color. I had no trouble laying color down at all.

There are minor caveats. Two or three pencils were slightly scratchy, and a handful of darker colors showed some crumbling during layering. Some users have reported breaks while sharpening; I did not experience that myself, aside from one break while pressing hard with the blender. None of the pencils gave me any trouble sharpening to a fine point.

Burning, Blending and Solvent Testing

This is the part that makes the set unusual. The colorless blender has a soft core and is meant to pull colors together, smoothing out visible pencil strokes without altering the color. The burnisher has a harder core and is intended for final layers, adding a sealed, glossy sheen, useful for subjects like cherries or a tomato skin. Because the burnisher is used with more pressure, it damages the paper tooth, so reserve it for the end.

In testing, the blender smoothed colors together as promised, though it left quite a few crumbs, which is normal for its soft core, and it did drag a little color upward. The burnisher produced the harder, shinier finish as expected. I have honestly never come across a set that bundles both pencils before, and it is a thoughtful inclusion for anyone who prefers dry blending over solvent.

For comparison, I also ran the same sphere test with odorless mineral spirits. Solvent liquefies the pigment and rejuvenates the paper tooth, letting you build more layers and richer depth once it dries. In my result, the solvent test looked slightly better than either dry method, but if you prefer to avoid solvents, having both blender and burnisher in the box is a real convenience.

Buying Advice

If you are after a budget set for adult coloring books, practice, or casual illustration, this set delivers where it counts: good saturation, solid layering, and two useful colorless pencils included. If the marketing language has you hoping for professional, artist-grade, lightfast pencils, dial those expectations back. That is what the “expert” and “artist quality” labels are doing, and the lightfast legend in particular should be ignored.

I also produced finished artwork with these on Derwent Lightfast paper, which gave noticeably better results thanks to the extra tooth, though pairing a high-quality sheet with a budget pencil set is entirely optional. Enjoy the pencils for what they are, and do not buy them for what the tin claims.

Conclusion

As a working tool, the Calore 72 set is a genuinely pleasant budget option with vibrant color, strong layering, and a rare blender-plus-burnisher pairing. Just treat the tin’s claims, especially “artist quality” and the homemade lightfast legend, as marketing rather than substance.