The best pastel pencils are a great choice for artists seeking versatility. They can be combined with traditional pastel drawing, they're brilliant for drawing in colour and they can be great to use with mixed media. Some are even water-soluble. On this page, we've gathered the best pastel pencils on the market based on our own reviews, in which we tested them in a range of different styles of art.
In our tests, we evaluated the pencils below in terms of binding, application and lightfastness, considering how they compare to each other. If you need some pointers, see the questions section at the bottom of this guide. If you want something wetter, see our pick of the best watercolour pencils. But in the meantime, these are the products that get our vote as the best pastel pencils available today.
The best pastel pencils available today
Why you can trust Creative Bloq Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
Best for professionals
Quality: professional
Lightfastness: nearly all
Caran d’Ache’s pastel pencils come with one of the highest price tags in our list of the best pastel pencils but quite deservedly so. These pencils are richly pigmented, and nearly all the colours in the 84-strong range have high lightfastness ratings. I find the texture of the pencil to be smooth as it goes down, and it leaves dense colour on the paper. They feel a bit harder than a soft pastel, and the core is quite thick. A handy perk is the hexagonal barrel, which means the pencil won’t roll away. The wood is smooth and easy to cut with a blade too. All in all, these are the best pastel pencils for professional use.
Best for details
Quality: professional
Lightfastness: most pencils
Cretacolor’s pastel pencils have a smooth, chalky feel that sits a bit more on the firmer side. This makes it easy to sharpen them to a reasonably good point, and I found they keep a point for longer than many others, making them one of the best pastel pencils for adding details and producing fine lines. The colour intensity of these pencils is excellent, with the pigment going down with a nice density. They tend not to blend as readily as other pastel pencils, though they do transfer to the surface well. The core is also on the thin side, making it a little more fragile. There are 72 colours in the range.
Best soft pastels
Quality: intermediate
Lightfastness: most pencils
If you're looking for the best soft pastel pencils, Koh-I-Noor’s are one of the softest I’ve used. They're bright and blend readily, though there is some loss of colour intensity when blending. With only 48 pencils, the range is a little narrow, although it offers enough for most artists. For the price, the colour is surprisingly intense and exceeded my expectations. Most of the colour range is lightfast as well. The casing is good quality and easy to sharpen with a blade but is also narrow and strong enough to sharpen with a pencil sharpener. I found these pastel pencils easy to use and suitable for beginners and professionals alike.
Best balance
Quality: intermediate
Lightfastness: most pencils
Stablio’s CarbOthello range has a fairly chalky feel, though I find them to be quite smooth going down. They are comparatively soft, so they blend reasonably well and leave nice, dense colour, putting them among the best pastel pencils to balance colour intensity and easy blending. Because of their softness, they tend to wear down quite quickly and produce a fair bit of dust. They don’t hold a point for long, so they suit bolder marks. The barrel is narrow enough for a sharpener, but, like most pastel pencils, the core may break, so I recommend using a blade. They're lightweight, easy to hold and can compete with more expensive brands (see our full Stablio CarbOthello review for more details).
Best value
Quality: professional
Lightfastness: most pencils
Faber Castell’s Pitt pastels are a versatile option that performs well for their price point. They feel quite smooth, are well pigmented and lay down colour fairly well – they do need a bit more pressure to produce really dense marks though. This means they can get a bit dusty. In terms of softness, Pitt pastels sit somewhere in the middle. I found they were hard enough to hold a reasonable point, but soft enough to blend a bit. Overall the Faber Castell Pitt pastels are a solid all-rounder, able to perform well for a variety of different uses. They are a good choice for anyone upgrading to more professional materials, and there are 60 colours in the range.
Best for combination
Quality: intermediate
Lightfastness: most pencils
The Derwent Pastel pencils offer a softer option with a slightly chalky feel more like a traditional pastel. These soft pastel pencils readily transfer pigment to the page and work well on a variety of different surfaces. They are particularly good at blending. For the cost, the intensity of colour is good as well. The pencils have a round wood binding that is smooth and easy to cut through. The core may be a bit too brittle to use with the range’s sharpener, so I recommend sharpening with a blade. Otherwise, I found the pencils quite robust. I rate Derwent’s as the best pastel pencils for anyone seeking a versatile, malleable option that feels closer to a pastel block, making them good to combine with other media.
What are pastel pencils?
To get technical for a moment, pastel pencils are a form of pastel encased in wood (as with most pencils). To give it colour, the pastel core contains pigment and it also contains binders (usually including chalk) for body. This element is what differentiates the pastel pencils from the pencils in our best coloured pencils list. Ordinary pencils use wax with other binders rather than chalk.
How to choose the best pastel pencils
Picking the best pastel pencils for you will depend a lot on your working style. You may want to compromise between softness and how much the pencil can blend versus being firm enough to produce crisp lines. If you have a more expressive or painterly drawing style, opt for soft pastel pencils, and if you are more interested in fine details, look for ones on the harder side (note that all pastel pencils tend to be harder than conventional soft pastels and should produce less mess).
Another thing to consider is how easy the pencils are to sharpen. The core of a pastel pencil tends to be quite fragile, and it may be necessary to use a blade to sharpen it. Also, more expensive pastel pencil ranges generally contain more pigment, meaning the colours are brighter, and they are more likely to be lightfast, so they won’t fade over time. This is important for professional work but might be sacrificed for beginners in favour of value.
Note that one challenge of pastel pencils is the dust they produce. To stop this lingering on the page, it's a good idea to draw using one of the best artists’ easels.