Aurora Art Supplies Colored Pencils Review

48 Colored Pencils from Aurora Art Supplies

Product Details

48 unique colors
Hexagonal wooden barrels
Comes with mini floral themed coloring book by Heather Burns
Lifetime Warranty

Reviewing Standards (The Tough Stuff)

Before I begin, I want to explain a couple things about my personal review standards. As a product reviewer, I will try out, compare, and write about a variety of products including items I already own, products recommended to me, requests, and free samples I sometimes receive in exchange for reviews.

I take the goal of providing our readers with quality, honest reviews very seriously and will not compromise my integrity as a reviewer by giving a positive review on a product I’m not too thrilled about – even if I was given the product for free.

That being said, I believe all of the products I review deserve an equal chance to prove their mettle and I will always strive to test and evaluate each product in a fair and balanced way.

First Impressions of Aurora Colored Pencils

When I first pulled the plastic tube full of fresh, vibrant colored pencils from the box they were shipped in, I was pumped! I must admit I get excited every time I receive new coloring supplies, and here they were, 48 pre-sharpened coloring beauties all ready to go. Also included with the pencils was a cute little coloring book with ten floral, botanical-style images by Heather Burns. The coloring book was a fun addition and would be nice to toss into a purse or bag with a few pencils to provide easy, on-the-go coloring whenever the mood may strike.

Aurora Art Supplies 48 Piece Colored Pencil Set with Mini Floral Coloring Book (Photo © Amazon)

Aurora’s colored pencil set comes in a plastic tube. (Photo © Amazon)

I opened the tube and poured the pencils out onto my table and noticed they were very plain. There were no color names or identifying numbers on the pencils. This bummed me out a little because I like to make a color chart for each set of pencils I have and with color names or numbers, this process is so much easier. This wasn’t a deal-breaker in my book but it did leave me wanting and I feel it gave the pencils a cheaper looking appearance.

Aurora Pencil Performance

First impressions aside, I decided to get down to business and test the quality of these pencils. They might not be the fanciest but I wanted to see how they handled laying down color on different types of paper.

The first type of paper I tried the Aurora Art Supply colored pencils on was plain, white sixty-five pound card stock. I noticed right away that even without applying a lot of pressure, the color was very waxy and light. It gave a slight burnished/shiny appearance with very little effort. I compared this to the results of two other brands of colored pencils, Crayola Erasables and CraZart. The color from the Aurora pencils didn’t want to settle into the tooth of the paper as easily as the other two brands. This caused me to apply more pressure to achieve a deeper color and left me with a very shiny end result.

Knowing that paper texture can be a major factor in the performance of colored pencils, I chose three coloring books from my stash, each with a unique paper quality, and began again. I compared all three brands together on each of the books and found that I got the best color result on the cheaper paper because it had a more coarse texture and grabbed the pigment better than the finer, thicker paper of the more expensive book. The Aurora Art Supply colored pencils beat out the Crayola Erasables in quality over all three paper types but was surpassed in a big way by the CraZart brand pencils. These results wouldn’t be as big of a deal if the Aurora pencils didn’t cost more than double the price per pencil than the CraZart brand.

I realize the bigger brand named pencil companies can afford to sell their products at a lower price because the volume of product they sell makes up for the cheaper price point. Even so, I just can’t recommend these pencils to anyone in good conscience at the current (sale) price of approximately thirty-five cents apiece when there are cheaper, higher quality options hovering around the fifteen cent per piece price range.

Aurora Art Supplies Colored Pencil Set Photos

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See Aurora Art Supplies Colored Pencil Set on Amazon

Final Thoughts on Aurora Colored Pencils

The Aurora Art Supply colored pencils are not an awful product. I would just like to see the cost match the quality a little more precisely. If you do decide to buy these pencils, I would definitely recommend using them on a more textured, toothier paper. I hope you get better results than I did but one awesome thing about this company is that they do offer a no questions asked, lifetime warranty. So if you get these pencils home and they don’t fit your coloring needs, they will replace or refund your money.

Thank you for reading my review on the Aurora Art Supply 48 piece colored pencil set. Please leave any questions or comments below and I will be sure to answer as soon as possible. Also, if you have had a different experience with this brand and would like to share, we would love to read about it. Please share in the comment section below. Happy Coloring!