Traditional watercolor sets are genuinely awkward to travel with — pans in a metal tin, water containers, and brushes all add bulk and weight for anyone wanting to paint on the go. Viviva Colors built its entire product line around solving that specific problem, creating watercolor "Colorsheets" thinner and lighter than a phone, alongside cork-based pans and complete travel kits. After going through their full product range, unique manufacturing approach, and substantial customer base, here's a complete breakdown to help you decide if it's the right watercolor brand for your creative practice.
Viviva Colors began as an innovative watercolor booklet crowdfunded on Indiegogo in 2017, started by two brothers in a medical school dorm in India, and has grown into a brand serving a stated community of over 60,000 artists across more than 50 countries.
This is genuinely the brand's signature, most distinctive product — rather than traditional pigment-based watercolor pans, Colorsheets use a proprietary method affixing concentrated dye onto a sheet of paper with minimal binder, resulting in a product weighing less than 1.5 ounces and smaller than a phone. The brand states this dye-based approach delivers genuinely striking vibrancy and transparency, requiring only a small amount of product to create vivid results, while still lasting comparably to a standard half-pan watercolor set despite the dramatically more compact format.
Original 16 Colors (517 reviews). The brand's clear flagship and most reviewed product, offering an everyday, versatile palette.
Spring Colorsheets (136 reviews) and Summer Colorsheets (10 reviews, featuring 2 neon shades for the first time). Seasonal palette variations giving customers different color mood options beyond the core set.
Extending beyond the dye-based Colorsheets format, Viviva also offers traditional cork-palette watercolor pans in Original and Spring 16-color sets. These are lightfast (meaning they won't fade over time, a genuinely important quality marker for watercolor pigments) and described as professional-grade, delivering richly pigmented, ink-like saturation on the page.
A6 Travel Paint Kit ($44.99, 30 reviews) and A5 Travel Paint Kit ($49.99, 35 reviews). Genuinely complete, all-in-one painting kits combining a waterbrush, a set of original Colorsheets, an ivory sketchbook, and a fine waterproof liner pen — addressing the real, practical challenge of needing multiple separate tools to paint on the go by consolidating everything into one compact, mess-free kit.
A5 Sketchbook (26 reviews). A dedicated 240gsm/120lb ivory paper sketchbook with 64 pages, specifically suited for beginner-friendly sketching and painting.
Colorsheets Bundle and Pans Bundle. Multi-palette bundles combining several seasonal Colorsheet or pan sets at a meaningful discount compared to individual purchases, letting customers build out a broader color range in one purchase.
Viviva states its Colorsheets are handmade by women in a local community in India, and describes the products as 100% eco-friendly, vegan, and non-toxic — genuinely meaningful details both for the brand's stated social impact and for parents or educators considering the product for younger artists given the non-toxic formulation.
The brand has been featured in Country Living, Design Insider, Martha Stewart, and Buzzfeed, and is sold through a genuinely broad retail network spanning Amazon, Etsy, and stationery shops across the US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Netherlands, Singapore, Hong Kong, and other countries — reflecting real, substantial international market presence beyond a single direct-to-consumer site.
The brand offers free replacements for any delivery issues, free shipping above $30 to the US and £25 to the UK, and maintains active promotions like bundle discounts and buy-one-get-one deals.
A genuinely novel product format solving a real portability problem. The dye-on-paper Colorsheets concept is a real innovation in the watercolor space, delivering genuine portability advantages (weight, size, mess-free use) that traditional pan sets simply can't match.
Real manufacturing transparency and social impact. Specifically stating that Colorsheets are handmade by women in a local Indian community gives the brand's ethical positioning genuine, specific substance rather than vague language.
A substantial, specific review base on the flagship product. With 517 reviews on the Original 16 Colors set alone, there's real evidence of sustained customer satisfaction with the core product.
Genuine format variety for different painting contexts. Offering Colorsheets for ultimate portability, traditional cork pans for a more classic watercolor experience, and complete travel kits for an all-in-one on-the-go solution means customers can choose the format matching their specific painting habits.
Credible mainstream media recognition. Being featured in established publications like Martha Stewart and Country Living reflects genuine editorial interest beyond the brand's own marketing.
Non-toxic, vegan formulation. This is a genuinely meaningful detail for parents considering these products for children, or for any customer specifically wanting to avoid harsher traditional pigment binders.
Dye-based Colorsheets have different lightfastness properties than traditional pigment watercolors. Since Colorsheets use concentrated dye rather than standard pigment, it's worth understanding that dye-based colors can sometimes be more prone to fading in direct sunlight over the very long term compared to genuinely lightfast pigments — worth considering this if you're creating artwork intended for long-term display versus a sketchbook or personal practice piece.
Choosing between Colorsheets and Pans depends on your specific painting style. Since these are genuinely different formats (dye-on-paper vs. traditional cork pan), it's worth considering whether ultimate portability (Colorsheets) or a more traditional watercolor pan experience (Pans) better matches how you actually like to paint.
Review counts vary considerably across the newer seasonal releases. With the Summer Colorsheets showing only 10 reviews compared to 517 on the original set, it's worth weighing review volume when trying a newer seasonal palette for the first time.
Sale and bundle pricing appears to be a consistent, ongoing site feature. With buy-one-get-one and bundle discounts prominently and consistently displayed, it's worth treating current promotional pricing as the likely effective standard rather than assuming a rare, time-limited event.
If you want genuinely vibrant, portable watercolors that can travel with you without the bulk of a traditional pan set, Viviva Colors offers a well-reviewed, genuinely innovative option worth trying. The combination of the distinctive, patent-worthy Colorsheets format, real manufacturing transparency and social impact, format variety spanning Colorsheets, traditional pans, and complete travel kits, credible mainstream media recognition, and non-toxic vegan formulation makes it easy to see why this brand has built such a devoted international following among artists and hobbyists who want to paint anywhere, anytime, without the usual watercolor setup hassle.
👉 Shop the full Viviva Colors watercolor and travel kit collection here