Brian Goulet's Top 5 Favorite Diamine Fountain Pen Inks

Brian Goulet will teach you how to "hack" the Goulet website to find out which Diamine inks are the most popular, and he will also share his top 5 favorite inks.

[bikkies]

I recently fell in love with Diamine Midnight from the most unlikely of circumstances. I received a 30ml bottle of it with some other Diamines. Because the UK postal service apparently likes to put parcels in a cement mixer then grind them into the gravel with their feet, just for grins, the parcel of inks arrived with the Midnight bottle shattered and with ink all over everything else. All over the packaging, all over the other contents, all over the other post that morning and all over me. I was furious and raging but, somehow, also became weirdly hooked on it. It had begun to evaporate and was this really gunky sticky mess, but also uber saturated. I ordered another bottle which arrived intact and I had to ink it up. It's far less dramatic than when my hands took a bath in it, but it has just kind of stuck there in my mind. It is now one of my go-to inks when I want a pen to just do the pen thing.

[lukaszpokoju]

Mine would be :
-Oxblood
-Autumn Oak
-Aurora borealis
-Oxford Blue
-Earl grey

Some underrated:
-Monaco red
-Salamander
-Eclipse
-Amber

[calska]

diamine almost did too good of a job on the "oxblood" ink. i've seen my own blood smeared on paper a few times (i'm clumsy but persist on working with sharp tools) and oxblood spread on paper with a brush is very close. you can practically see the plasma in oxblood. kinda creepstery.

[elizabethgray]

Monboddo's Hat is my favorite. I journal with purple ink and this is a lovely rich color.

[jkrause]

My favorite Diamine inks in no particular order are Oxford Blue, Sherwood Green, Oxblood, Red Dragon, Ancient Copper, and Syrah, and for purple Monboddo's Hat.

[karvinsunny]

My list:

1. Golden Brown - basically Iroshizuku Ina-ho. Beautiful gold brown that shades wonderfully. Smooth, easy on the eye.

2. Steel Blue - dark teal, with nice red sheen. It was my first ever bottled ink, and I just love it. Again, easy maintenance.

3. Imperial Purple - rich, dark purple, with a heavy golden sheen. Super smooth and flowy ink. And the color is beautiful, almost Lamy Dark Lilac color... almost...

[maxchavelev]

I love Sepia, wonderful shading, and very pleasant light warm color.

[HwitDraca]

My fav Diamine inks are
- Prussian Blue
- Ancient Copper
- Ochre
- Sherwood Green
- Oxblood

[sebnemsimsek]

Diamine’s Cappadocia is my favorite ink so far! Nice, smooth and shimmery 💚✨

[fbales]

I’ve not met a Diamine ink I didn’t like. Of course the one I wanted is out of stock—Pumpkin—hope it’s still being made.

[nicola.needles]

My favourites are
Apple Glory - which is such a happy green that I’ve not really seen anywhere else
Wild Strawberry - has a lovely subtle sheen before sheen it was a thing
Bilberry - a super wet blue that is immensely well behaved
Earl Grey - the perfect grey, dark enough for every day use with beautiful shading

[LANCSKID]

For me, as a writer who always first drafts in longhand, Diamine inks provide superb results. Available as 30ml, 50ml and 80ml in very stylish bottles. As for colour choice, I stick to pretty regular inks from the range: Royal Blue, Oxblood and Emerald being my favourites. No clogging, no dragging, just good, consistent delivery on the page (I use Clairefontaine, ivory finish 90gsm notebooks, graph pads and plain/lined journals).

[gailfus]

Favorite Diamine inks: Coral, Damson, Wild Strawberry, Blue-Black, Kelly Green, Earl Grey & Sunset. I keep most of my pens (up to 25 now!) inked up and use them daily on a rotating basis, so I have a lot of go-to inks--and most of them are Diamine. It's is my go-to brand because their inks are so consistent and always behave nicely, and because they are inexpensive. If money was no object and I could afford to buy more higher-end inks like Sailor, Colorverse and Pilot iroshizuku, I would still buy the ones on the list, above. I haven't found any colors I like as well as those. If you're looking for a nice, dark ink for work that looks professional but isn't blue or black, I highly recommend Diamine Damson. I'm a nurse and have a Platinum Curidas for work that I keep inked up with Damson. It's really perfect for the super-fine F nib (by Western standards--I can't imagine what an EF nib would be like!) because it's a fairly wet ink. The dry time is very fast, it tends not to bleed through crappy paper, and it's pretty water resistant--meaning even if it gets wet you can still see what you wrote through the ink smudge.

[bruin_tea_et_ecriture]

Diamine pumpkin!! I have had that dedicated in my orange twsbi 580 al with no issues. I REALLY love it!

[shikha]

We’re finally getting Diamine ink in India and i have already purchased 7 (Oxblood, Ancient Copper, Coral, Blaze Orange, Soft Mint, Monboddo’s Hat and Amaranth). So this is perfect timing!! Thank you for getting me to love fountain pens all over again!

[patpear]

Diamine Skull & Roses is one of the best sheening inks out there for the price. I also like Oxford Blue for everyday writing with a little flair.

[johnandrewmunroe]

Just bought my first Goulet Pens order all the way from Tokyo. Diamine Red Dragon ink in the 80ml bottle. My total favorite ink, used with a Lamy Joy and 1.1 stub nib. Rock on Goulet Pens!

[geckonia]

I love Red Dragon too and always have it loaded into a pen. Currently it’s in a Parallel.

[tomgidden]

Mine:

1. Ochre: the brown of choice... unlike other browns (incl. the excellent but slightly too orange SBREBrown) it’s not too red (eg. Ancient Copper), not too chocolate (eg. Macassar); and not too yellow. Shades well. A rich tea-stain tannin color; almost like varnishing the page.
2. Damson: A muted grayish purple that goes well on cream stock. The purple equivalent to Graphite’s green. [honorable mention to the staggeringly misnamed Graphite]
3. Earl Grey: a beautiful gray with deep shading and a colder, less neutral tone than the badly-behaved and far more expensive Montblanc Oyster Gray.
4. Sunshine Yellow: What the insipid Lamy Mango should’ve been if they’d actually intended to match the pen.
5. Jade Green: I rarely use it, but it’s such a juicy, vibrant lickable green with tonnes of shading, so it can be dark enough to write with, given a wet enough pen.

And a massive Honorable Mention to all the incredible inks that Diamine make for third parties.

[proultravioleta]

Mine are:
Autumn oak (beautiful shading)
Meadow (nice green alternative to my favorite Iroshizuku's Chiku-rin)
Oxblood (how not to like this one, brownish dark red)
Majestic Blue
Majestic Purple