Faber-Castell Polychromos Extra 20 Color Set Review: Beautiful Colors, Awkward Value

Introduction

Faber-Castell has expanded the Polychromos range with an extra 20-color set, taking the total lineup to 140 pencils. On paper, that sounds like great news for pencil artists. The reality is a little more nuanced: half of the new set leans vivid and bright, the other half is made up of very pale tones, and depending on which Polychromos set you already own, some of these colors may feel close to pencils you already have.

This review takes a practical angle: not just whether the colors are pretty, but whether this set actually earns a place in your collection, and at what cost.

What Is in the Set

The 20 pencils split into two clear groups. The first ten are bright, bold shades, including some that read as almost neon, such as a vivid yellow and green alongside golden ochre, perylene orange, red jasper, pyrrole red and quinacridone magenta. The second ten are very pale tones designed more for blending, including light zircon red plus light reddish, yellowish and brownish shades that work beautifully as Caucasian flesh tones in portraiture.

The standouts in our eyes are the greens. Bohemian Green Earth is a gorgeous, very pale green, Green Jasper is a lovely green-blue, and Slate Green and Serpentine Gray are also lovely, particularly from a botanical point of view.

One caveat: the set leans bright and pale. If you were hoping for genuinely dark tones, a super dark blue, red or green, you will not find them here. The darkest greens available, such as Chrome Oxide Green or Pine Green in the broader range, are still not especially dark.

Lightfastness: Worth a Careful Look

The new colors carry decent lightfast ratings on paper: 14 pencils with three-star ratings, five with two stars, and one with a single star. The 120 set fares better proportionally, with 102 three-star pencils, 16 two-star and only two one-star.

The wrinkle is how the stars map to the Blue Wool system Faber-Castell uses. The brand states its three stars represent Blue Wool seven or eight, two stars represent five or six, and one star represents three or four. But on the Blue Wool scale, six is its own category of very good lightfastness, separate from fair ratings like four and five, and three is a poor rating. By grouping ratings in pairs, the three-star system skips categories, which makes it genuinely hard to know whether a two-star pencil is fair or very good. An ASTM-style or five-star system would simply communicate this better.

This will not matter to casual sketchers, but if archival permanence drives your buying decisions, it is worth digging into individual pencil ratings before committing.

How the New Colors Compare to the 120 Set

If you already own the 120 set, several of the new colors have close relatives. Light Yellow Glaze resembles Light Yellow, Cadmium Yellow Lemon is close to Lazurite Green, Dark Naples Ochre echoes Golden Ochre, Orange Glaze sits near Perylene Orange, Sanguine is close to Red Jasper, Pink Carmine approximates Pyrrole Red, Light Magenta resembles Quinacridone Magenta, and Violet, Blue Violet and Ultramarine each have near matches in the existing range.

The bottom ten pale tones are a different story. Very few 120-set colors replicate them: Light Zircon Red and the three pale reddish, yellowish and brownish flesh tones have almost no equivalents, Bohemian Green Earth has none at all, and Serpentine Gray could not be matched to anything in the older set. Slate Green’s closest neighbour is Warm Gray, which is not especially close.

In short: if you own the 120 set, roughly half of this expansion duplicates tones you already have, while the pale half is where the genuinely new value sits.

The Pricing Problem

Here is where the set becomes hard to recommend without hesitation. At the time of writing in August 2026, the 140 Polychromos set was listed around £385 on Amazon, while the 120 set sat near £170 to £178. That is a difference of roughly £207 for 20 pencils, which is a difficult gap to justify. Faber-Castell’s own website priced the 120 set at £330, and the new 140 set was not yet listed there, so comparison pricing may shift as stock settles.

Since this expansion set is only a few weeks old, prices will likely move. The 140 set will most likely come down, and the 120 set should stay roughly where it is. A more economical path if you already own the 120 set: check the swatches, identify only the pale tones you will actually use, and buy those pencils open stock.

Who This Set Is Best For

From a botanical art perspective, this set has real appeal. Bohemian Green Earth, Green Jasper, Slate Green, Serpentine Gray and Light Red all suit botanical work, and the pale reddish, yellowish and brownish tones would slot nicely into botanical pieces too.

Portrait artists will appreciate the flesh-tone cluster. Collectors who simply enjoy owning complete new sets will find plenty to love in the vivid half. If your current set is the 120 and you rarely use pale tones, though, this expansion may not earn its keep.

Things to Consider Before Buying

Three questions should guide your decision. First, do you already own the 120 set, and how many of these twenty colors genuinely duplicate it? Second, are the pale tones useful for the artwork you actually make, whether portrait or botanical? Third, does the current price gap between the 120 and 140 sets make sense for your budget right now?

If the answers point toward yes, the set will integrate well into your workflow and the greens alone are worth admiring. If not, open stock is a sensible alternative.

Conclusion

The Faber-Castell Polychromos Extra 20 set contains some genuinely beautiful colors, especially the greens and the pale flesh tones, and it rounds the range out to a formidable 140 pencils. But with roughly half the set sitting close to existing 120-set colors, an ambiguous lightfast rating system, and an early-stage price gap that is hard to overlook, we would urge anyone who already owns the 120 set to compare swatches carefully, and consider buying the unique pale tones open stock before committing to the full tin. If the colors fit your art, it will serve you well. Just make sure you need it before you buy.