Fountain Pens

Ink Sampling Guide: How to Explore Fountain Pen Inks Without Going Broke

By YPen Published · Updated

Ink Sampling Guide: How to Explore Fountain Pen Inks Without Going Broke

The fountain pen ink world is enormous. Hundreds of manufacturers produce thousands of colors, and a single bottle costs $12-35. If you bought every ink that looked appealing online, you’d need a second mortgage and a dedicated storage room.

Ink samples solve this problem. For $2-4 each, you get a small vial (typically 2-4ml) of ink—enough to fill a pen once or twice and write several pages. You experience the ink’s actual color, flow, dry time, and behavior on your paper without committing to a full bottle.

Sampling is the only sane way to explore fountain pen inks. Here’s how to do it well.

Where to Buy Samples

Dedicated Ink Sample Retailers

Goulet Pens (gouletpens.com): The gold standard for ink samples in the US. Over 600 inks available as 2ml samples for $2.50-4.00 each. Clean packaging, excellent website with ink comparison tools, and detailed swabs/writing samples for every ink.

Vanness Pens (vanness1938.com): Another excellent US-based retailer with a large ink sample selection. Their samples are generously sized, and their ink organization by color makes browsing intuitive.

JetPens (jetpens.com): Carries samples from major Japanese ink lines (Pilot Iroshizuku, Sailor Jentle) alongside other brands. Good for targeted sampling of specific inks.

Anderson Pens (andersonpens.com): Strong selection with particularly good availability of harder-to-find brands and colors.

Pen Chalet (penchalet.com): Broad selection with frequent sales that can reduce sample prices.

International Options

Pure Pens (UK), Appelboom (Netherlands), and Stylo.ca (Canada) offer samples for non-US buyers. Shipping costs for small vials can be high internationally, so batching orders makes sense.

How to Choose Samples

With hundreds of options, you need a strategy. Here are approaches that work:

The Color Family Deep Dive

Choose a color family (blue, green, brown, purple) and sample five to eight inks within it. This reveals the range within a single color—you’ll discover that “blue” encompasses everything from pale sky to near-black navy, from gray-blue to teal, from bright electric to muted denim.

Sample set idea (blues): Pilot Iroshizuku Kon-peki, Diamine Oxford Blue, Sailor Sei-boku, Monteverde Horizon Blue, Robert Oster Blue Sea, Noodler’s Liberty’s Elysium. Six samples, ~$18. You’ll learn more about blue ink in a week than browsing online for months.

The Ink Property Exploration

Sample inks specifically for interesting properties:

Sheening inks (display a metallic secondary color): Organics Studio Nitrogen (blue with red sheen), Diamine Majestic Blue (blue with gold sheen), Troublemaker Kelp Tea (brown with gold sheen).

Shading inks (show variation between light and dark within a stroke): Pilot Iroshizuku Ku-jaku (teal), Diamine Autumn Oak (orange-brown), Robert Oster Fire and Ice (blue-red).

Shimmer inks (contain metallic particles): Diamine Shimmertastic line, J. Herbin 1670 Anniversary inks, Ferris Wheel Press inks. Note: shimmer inks require more cleaning and shouldn’t be used in pens with very fine nibs.

For a foundational guide to fountain pen ink properties, see [INTERNAL: fountain-pen-ink-guide-beginners].

If you’re looking for an everyday ink—the one you’ll actually buy a bottle of—sample inks based on practical requirements:

  • Water resistance (for important documents)
  • Fast dry time (for left-handed writers or quick note-taking)
  • Professional appearance (dark blues, blacks, blue-blacks)
  • Behavior on your specific paper

Sample three to five candidates in your target category, test each in your actual daily pen on your actual daily paper, and buy a bottle of the winner.

How to Test Samples Properly

The Setup

You need:

  • Your actual pen (not a dip test—fill the pen and write with it)
  • Your actual paper (the paper you’ll use this ink on daily)
  • A consistent writing sample (write the same paragraph with each ink)
  • Good lighting (natural light shows ink colors most accurately)

What to Evaluate

Color on paper. Online swatches are approximate. Screens vary. Camera settings vary. The only way to know what an ink looks like is to see it on your paper, from your pen, in your light.

Wet and dry behavior. Some inks are wet (flow generously, saturated color) and some are dry (flow less, lighter color, faster dry time). Your pen’s nib and feed interact with ink wetness. A wet ink in a wet pen can be too much; a dry ink in a dry pen can be too little.

Dry time. Time how long the ink takes to dry on your paper. Touch it gently with a finger at intervals. If you write in a notebook and turn pages quickly, you need fast-drying ink. If you journal slowly and let pages dry, slower-drying ink is fine.

Water resistance. Drop a small water droplet on a dried writing sample. Does the ink dissolve, smear, or hold firm? For important documents, you want ink that resists water. Most standard inks are NOT waterproof—specifically designed archival inks (like Sailor Sei-boku or Platinum Carbon Black) are needed for permanence.

Ghosting and bleed-through. Check the reverse side of your paper. Can you see the writing (ghosting)? Did ink penetrate the paper (bleed-through)? This is ink-and-paper dependent, so test on the paper you’ll actually use.

The Ink Journal

Keep a dedicated ink testing journal. For each sample, record:

  • Ink name and manufacturer
  • Date tested
  • Pen and nib used
  • Paper used
  • Writing sample
  • Dry time
  • Water resistance
  • Color notes (in daylight and artificial light)
  • Overall impression

A dedicated ink journal in a Leuchtturm1917 or Rhodia notebook, with each sample getting a page, becomes a personal reference that’s more useful than any online review. For choosing that journal, see [INTERNAL: best-notebooks-for-journaling].

Managing the Sample Collection

Ink sampling can become its own hobby (and expense). Keep it practical:

Set a budget. “$20 per month on samples” prevents the collection from spiraling.

Finish samples before ordering more. A vial drawer with thirty untested samples isn’t exploration—it’s hoarding.

Decide quickly. After testing a sample, make a decision: would I buy a bottle? Yes, no, or maybe. The maybes get one more test session. If they’re still maybe, they’re no.

Track what you’ve sampled. A simple spreadsheet or list prevents reordering inks you’ve already tried. It also reveals your preferences over time—you might discover you consistently prefer warm-toned blues or hate red-leaning purples.

When to Buy the Bottle

You’ve found an ink you love in sample form. Before buying the bottle, consider:

  • A full bottle (30-80ml) lasts months to years for most writers
  • Your tastes may change as you sample more
  • Some inks behave differently from a fresh bottle versus a sample vial (aging and evaporation affect samples)

My rule: buy the bottle only after you’ve used a complete sample and genuinely missed the ink when it was gone. If you finished a sample and immediately thought “I need more of that,” it’s bottle-worthy. If you finished it and moved on to the next sample without looking back, it wasn’t.

Ink sampling is one of the great pleasures of the fountain pen hobby. The sheer variety of colors, properties, and behaviors available is astonishing, and sampling lets you explore it all for the price of a coffee per ink. Start with five samples in your favorite color family, fill your pen, and discover what’s possible.