My Favourite Fountain Pen Inks of 2025

At the end of 2025 I sat down to figure out my favourite inks of the year, because I wanted to share them with friends and on Instagram.

But where to start? I’d swatched so many new inks in 2025, narrowing it down was a bit overwhelming! So I came up with some criteria:

• The ink had to be new to me in 2025, it didn’t have to be a new release.
• I wanted approximately three inks from each colour group – red, orange, yellow, green, teal, blue, purple, pink, brown and grey.
• Diamine Inkvent 2025 inks were disallowed because I was in the middle of opening and swatching the inkvent at the time, and I knew recency bias would skew my selections otherwise.

So I started paging through my ink journal and noting down inks, and then winnowing down the list until I’d picked my absolute faves. There are a couple of inks that should be included here but I couldn’t find my bottles of them, but overall, these are my picks!

Let’s take a look at these a bit closer. First, the reds, oranges, yellows, greens and teals:

If I’d been able to find everything, Van Dieman’s Strawberry Lime Cheesecake (a Soe & Soe exclusive) would have appeared in the reds. And I have to confess, I did break my self-imposed rule with Apatite – I actually swatched a sample of it a couple of years ago, which I’d forgotten. It appeared on the list this year because I finally got (half a) bottle of it thanks to the generosity of a friend.

I wasn’t expecting Durian and Cape Jasmine to look so similar, and I’m not sad about that – Durian is an exclusive from Malaysian store Pengallery, but Cape Jasmine is much more accessible and I have a small bottle of it already!

And now on to the blues, purples, pinks, browns and greys:

So many gorgeous inks on these two pages – I keep wanting to call out favourites, but they’re all favourites, that’s the point!

If I had to pick my absolute favourites of everything at gunpoint, across the two pages I’d choose:

• Fanyantan – Summer Evening Sky
• Collection Traced – Beinian
• Tono & Lims – Bechorium
• Kitty Inkpot x Soe & Soe – Misty Fairy Forest
• Diamine – Kong Girls
• Kobe Ink – Milk Chocolate

I’ve had a wonderful, colourful, inky year. I’m so grateful to the friends who’ve shared their collections with me, the community I’ve swapped inks with, and the makers who create all these gorgeous colours to brighten our pages and our fingers. Here’s to a 2026 full of colourful words and thoughts!