Derwent Chroma Flow 150 Set: A Full Palette Review

Introduction

When Derwent first launched the Chroma Flow range, it arrived with a clear mission: go head to head with Prismacolor in the soft-core colored pencil market. That is why the initial release was small and rolled out in America first, where generations of artists grew up with Prismacolor as their default pencil. It made sense commercially, but it left many artists, particularly in the UK where Derwent is based, waiting for a palette that felt complete.

Derwent followed up with a 72 set, but the obvious benchmark was the 150-color Prismacolor range. With the launch of this new 150 set, Chroma Flow finally has the palette to compete properly, and after working with the full set, it is hard not to be impressed.

A Palette Built to Compete

The range positions itself around vibrant, blendable color with smooth lay down, and the expanded palette makes that promise much more interesting. The full 150 layout runs from a generous spread of yellows and oranges through deep reds, purples and pinks, into a wide selection of blues, aquas and greens, and finishes with earth tones, a beautiful range of grays, black, white, silver and gold.

The greens deserve particular mention. There is a genuinely useful range here, from pastel mint and key lime through pine green and basil, including two notably dark greens in leaf green and light olive, plus welcome gray-greens like laurel green. The earth tones are equally strong, with gorgeous shades such as burnt sienna, licorice, coffee bean and winter lake. At the very end of the tin sit two newcomers, silver mint and ice blue, which appear to be intended as metallic shades, though the shimmer is subtle and only visible in certain light.

The 78 New Colors

This set adds 78 colors to the range, and many of them fill real gaps. Standouts include sienna gold, clementine, the burnt-orange carrot, the gorgeous cardinal red, and the pairing of sangria and shiraz, the latter being a stunning deep purple. Turkish delight and ash rose are two more that earn their place.

The blue section gains some of the best additions: Santorini and brilliant blue are near-perfect summer sky colors, blue yonder sits just darker than Carolina blue, and orient and mineral blue deliver lovely aqua tones. The neutral family also benefits from almond frost, rose quartz, red storm, frost, slate gray and carbon gray.

Overlaps with Other Derwent Ranges

For those cross-referencing existing sets, 18 colors in the Chroma Flow 150 share names with colors in the Derwent Lightfast range, including sun yellow, amber gold, flame scarlet, salmon, denim, pine green and basil. Note that a shared name does not always mean a shared shade; the Lightfast pine is considerably darker than the Chroma Flow pine green. Six colors also marry up with the Derwent Artist 120 set, including ash rose, rose pink and grass green.

Lightfast Ratings Explained

The 150 colors are rated on the blue wool system, which runs from 8 (most lightfast) down to 1 (least). The breakdown is worth knowing before you sell original work: 49 colors are rated 8, 39 are rated 7, 16 are rated 6, 24 are rated 5, 6 are rated 4, 5 are rated 3, 10 are rated 2 and one color is rated 1.

In practical terms, artists who only work with the most stable pigments have 49 colors to choose from. Those who accept ratings of 6 or above get roughly 103 colors suitable for original artwork. The fugitive colors cluster, as usual, around the pinks, purples and lavenders. Chroma Flow is not positioned as the range for gallery and competition work; that role belongs to the Derwent Lightfast set. For students, hobbyists and artists who accept the trade-off, the soft core makes these a genuinely attractive option.

Real Artwork Results

To put the set through its paces, a kingfisher drawing was the natural test. The bird’s turquoise and deep blues set against rich oranges and a warm yellow background is exactly the kind of vibrant contrast these pencils are built for, and the results were bright and punchy.

The pencils perform beautifully on both high-quality cotton paper and smoother surfaces. On Derwent Lightfast paper, a 100% cotton sheet, they layer and burnish well without damaging the surface. On Strathmore 300 series Bristol Vellum, a much smoother stock used for swatching the additional colors, the lay down was just as satisfying. Earlier testing with smaller sets also showed the pencils hold up well on darker paper, staying vibrant rather than going chalky.

Quality Control and Sharpening

Soft-core pencils always come with sharpening trade-offs, and the early 24 set had its share of issues: several pencils with breaking cores and trouble with handheld sharpeners, where the barrel wood felt too soft and snagged on the blade. A hand-crank sharpener produced much better results.

The good news is that quality has clearly improved across the range. Out of all 150 pencils in this set, every one was sharpened before swatching using a hand-crank sharpener, and only a single pencil suffered a core break, which resolved after removing the broken tip and resharpening. That is a solid result for a soft-core range of this size.

Pricing and Set Options

Alongside the 150 set, Derwent now offers a 100 set of Chroma Flow, which is a smart middle option. Expect better prices at third-party retailers such as Amazon or Jackson’s than at the Derwent store directly, so it pays to shop around before committing. Larger set sizes put Derwent on far more competitive footing against ranges from Karisma-grade competitors and Faber-Castell’s 120 sets, and the direction feels right for the brand.

Conclusion

The Derwent Chroma Flow 150 set is the release this range always needed. The expanded palette fills genuine gaps, the greens and neutrals are impressively curated, and sharpening reliability has improved markedly since the early small sets. If you accept that the lightfast ratings limit which colors belong in sellable originals, this is one of the most exciting soft-core colored pencil sets available today.