Power armour is the first thing most painters ever put a brush to, and the thing they paint more of than anything else for the rest of their lives. Squad after squad, year after year. It is worth learning properly once.

The good news: it is five steps. Not fifty. The method below is the same one behind every well-painted armoured trooper you have ever admired, and it has not meaningfully changed in thirty years. What separates a model that reads on the table from one that looks flat is not talent and it is not a secret. It is picking colours that belong together, and putting them down in the right order.

This guide covers the method, the four classic colourways, and the mistakes that cost people the most time. Every paint named here is a warcolours colour you can buy on its own, or as a matched War Kit with the guesswork already removed.

Less than you think. Power armour is smooth, hard-edged and forgiving, which is exactly why it is the standard starting point.

• An undercoat. Black. Almost always black.
• An armour base colour with real coverage, so you are not building six thin layers and praying.
• A shade to sink into the recesses. Use an ink, not a chalky wash. More on this below, because it matters more than anything else here.
• One or two highlight colours lighter than the base.
• A metal for weapons and trim.
• Two brushes. One to cover plates fast, one that holds a fine point.

That is the entire shopping list. Five paints paints a trooper. Twelve paints a trooper with character.

1. 1 Undercoat black. Black kills the plastic sheen, gives the paint something to grip, and does something people underrate: it pre-shades the model. Every colour you put over black sits in a world that already has shadows in it. Prime thin. A thick undercoat drowns detail before you have painted a thing, and the detail is the only reason you bought the model.
2. 2 Base the armour. One even coat across every armour plate. Do not fight the recesses at this stage, and do not try to keep it off the trim. Coverage is the whole job here. This is where a high-opacity basecoat earns its money: a colour that covers in one pass over black saves you three coats and a lot of resentment. Our ONECOAT range is built for exactly this step.
3. 3 Shade the recesses. Thin ink, drawn into every panel line and recess. Let it flow; capillary action does the work. This single step does more for the model than anything else on this list, because it is what creates depth. Skip it and the armour stays flat no matter how good your highlights are.
4. 4 Highlight the edges. A lighter colour, on the raised edges only, with the side of the brush. Not the middle of the plate. The edges. One pass gets you tabletop-ready; a second, brighter pass on the sharpest corners only gets you something people pick up and look at. Restraint is the entire skill: a highlight that covers half the plate is not a highlight, it is a second basecoat.
5. 5 Metals and detail. Weapons, trim, lenses, whatever the model has. This is the part that takes the longest and the part that makes it yours. Everything before this was armour. This is the character.

The method never changes. Only the colours do. Here are the four schemes that cover the overwhelming majority of armoured troopers, with the exact warcolours recipes.

Three of those are worth a note.

Red does not highlight with red. There is no lighter red above a good armour red, not one that looks right. It highlights toward orange. Red 1 then Orange 2 gives you the hot, flame-lit edge that red armour is known for, and avoids the chalky pink that comes from mixing white into red.

Grey armour is not grey. Reach for a neutral grey and the model comes out looking like undercoat. The classic cold scheme is blue-grey, which is why Blue Grey 3 bases it and Indigo shades it. That cold lean is the entire look.

Dark armour needs a bigger highlight jump. Over a base as deep as Green 5, a highlight only one step lighter disappears. Skip a step. Green 3 reads; Green 4 does not.

• Paint straight from the bottle. Thin it. Two thin coats beat one thick one every time, and a thick coat fills the panel lines you are about to shade, which quietly ruins step three before you get there.
• Highlighting the whole edge. Light does not hit every edge. Pick a direction, usually up, and highlight the edges facing it. A model highlighted everywhere looks like it is being lit from inside a lightbulb.
• Shading the whole model. Ink goes in the recesses, not across the plates. Slathering it over everything dulls the base colour you just laid down and undoes your own work.
• Skipping the ink to save time. It is the fastest step and it does the most. If you are short on time, cut a highlight, never the shade.
• Starting on your favourite model. Paint a trooper you do not care about first. Nobody's first is good. Get it out of the way on something you will happily strip.

You will not paint one of these. You will paint ten, and then ten more. Batch them.

Undercoat the whole unit at once. Base the whole unit at once. Ink the whole unit at once. Do each step across every model before moving to the next, and the squad takes a fraction of the time ten individual models would. The method is identical; only the order of operations changes. This is how people finish armies instead of accumulating half-painted ones.

The trap to avoid: do not batch the detail step. Trim, lenses and markings are the fun part, and grinding them out ten at a time is how a hobby starts feeling like a job.