White Nights, Ladoga, Sonnet Watercolour Compared, St Petersburg Paints Review 

I've sampled a ton of brands of all price ranges. The biggest difference from most student level brands is pigmentation, binder level, and pigments used. I do still suggest anyone start with artist quality and this is why.. I wish I had it would have actually saved me money and frustration in the end. First off you don't need 24 colors, you need six or seven of the RIGHT colors. With those you can mix just about anything, and it greatly reduces the cost of artist paints for a working palette. Get a good transparent single pigment split primary (warm and cool of red, yellow and blue) and burnt sienna (which gives you easy browns and greys).. add a natural green or a dark (sepia or payne's grey typically or you can go with black so you can mix your own convenience darks) if you wish. Everything else is unnecessary...nice to have but you can mix it all with little effort. Another option if you like natural muted tones is ultramarine, burnt sienna, sap green, quin magenta, sepia, and yellow ochre... makes it easy to paint landscapes, soft florals, etc. Second, swatches only tell part of the tale, it's how they behave that really makes the difference.. you have to actually paint with them to see how flow, pigmentation, transparency, etc affect your experience. Artist quality paints are simply easier to use when compared apples to apples. When you are starting out do yourself a favor and buy the easier option. Third is lightfastness... this may matter to you and it may not but you get a larger variety of solid lightfast pigments in artist level, as well as a larger selection of single pigments. It's very important to me because I want to be able to display, gift, or sell my work without any worry. They often still sell fugitive pigments that are popular such as opera rose and genuine alizarin crimson, but they are clearly labeled. White Nights and it's "siblings" offer many fugitive colors, including those single digit pigments (py1 etc) which are really awful, but also colors like Golden and Green which both fade rather terribly. They also are very lacking in good transparent lightfast yellows and reds. If you would like to see real life UV tests of WN and Sonnet check kimcrickdotcom. That said, you can pick and choose from any of them and get a decent working palette in the end. Another similar brand you may want to look at is Rosa Gallery...similar quality, come in full pans, very inexpensive. Finally, I wonder how the current political issues in Russia and the Ukraine will affect production and export of these brands.. might want to grab some while you can, or a few backups of colors you really love.

I've got to admit I have been watching you since I was like 6 and I'm turning 13 in 4 days and wow my art has progressed so much because of you so thankyou!! 😁💙

You are a prince to do such thorough research and a detailed review. Thank you!

In 2019, I got a White Nights set of 24 full pans for 37.50, which I thought was a great deal, plus it had room for 12 more pans, so I added more colors from Jackson's Art supplies to customize my set. I am tempted to try out the Lagoda. Thank you for the video.

This is a great review, thanks! I have a mixture of Sonnet and White Nights and prefer them over the other sets I have, even in preference to the Daniel Smith starter set I treated myself to! I have often wondered what the difference was between the different ranges. Thanks for doing the detective work!

thanks Jon for all your help .

Thank you. Great review!

Interesting and very educational, thank you. :)

I’m converted, I ordered the 24 set of white knights with the plastic palette, the other well known brand That you mentioned have become so expensive and these are a much better option for me, I may get a set of Ladoga later to gradually replace the white knights when needed. Thankyou for such an in depth review this series has been so helpful

Hello, I found your videos on the Russian watercolors fascinating. I just order the Sonnets for the metal tin actually, I will use the paint as well. I was going to jump into the white nights with the Sonnet tin but now I think I will just buy the Ladoga set. I live in the US and through Amazon I recently found St. Petersburg's Classics that are made in Russia and hand pour as well. They started making them in 1976 so I bought a full set of 36 for 33 US dollars. They are also called aqua. If you find them please do a video on them. Mine are on the way and will do a video when I get them. Thanks for your work!

Thank you Jon! This was really great! I have the White Nights paints, and I have been so curious about how the others perform in comparison. Good to know if ( when) I get short of money, I can go for any of the other two! Again, thanks Jon!

Just got a set of Paul Rubins 24 full pans in a big blue tin. Very similar to all of these. The full pans are separated a bit in the tin. So they have a little breathing room and won’t run all into each other. Great for traveling. They dry very hard. So hoping to get through customs at the airport oK. I’m used to honey based paint. Not so great for travel. Time will tell. Thx for your review! And Pigment information!

Great review, thank you 👍👍I always wondered about Sonnet and Ladoga. I own white nights set 24, I like them, but I also have Van Gogh, and I know WN is artist grade, but I feel different about VG, I kind a like it more. But I think all are these are nice quality really. I thought I was the only one to say Lagoda instead of Ladoga 😆

Hi MR66, first Of all great channel, so thank you, MR66 I hope my opinions & advice maybe helpful, I've had the 36 full pan set of White Nights professional grade W/C for almost 5 years now & paid $73 AUD, & in my opinion if you are new to Watercolour painting and like me on a budget & want to invest in a quality set with 27 single pigment colours, and with only one fugitive colour pv3 violet, I would have to say these paint's have excellent light fastness I say this because my 5 year old swatches have very little fading that's including the fugitive colour pv3 violet go figure, this set caters for artists that paint Botanical Landscape & Portraits, but like any other set this size of course you want like every single colour, did I mention even after 5 years these paint's remain moist that's very cool I've had 15 mil tubes from Daniel Smith that have fully dried out in 1year & yes the cap was on properly,😀.

I am in Canada i can’t find the LADOGA in art stores or on amazon. I don’t like using eBay as i have been scammed before. So I’m torn between getting a 24 set of sonnet or white night. I have a small 6 piece set of white nights I got open stock and i love them. After watching your video I think I may just get sonnets and then just replace then with white nights open stock when i run out. Thank you for the review.

I have two different palettes from white nights and the yellow palette from sonnet by newskaja palitra. in my eyes are all the colors that I have a very good finest highly pigmented artist quality. only two violetts from the yellow palette are not so lightfast , but just the bluish will fade away a little bit and both will look like a pretty awesome magenta. I have no problem with this fact and I can handle this very well :)

I bought a secondhand set of the black white nights tin with 21 pans and at first I was a little disappointed to find that the colors inside are sonnets. But now I'm really glad to find out that it doesn't really matter that much. But will the fugitive colors like orange and violet fade really fast? I'll probably just mix my orange anyway. Thanks for the video!

Thank you very much.

Hi , I have the vibrant palete from van gogh but I miss some neutral or basic colors, like brown, ochre, magenta, cool red , a yellow more to cool side, my set has the color: permament lemon yellow 254, transparent yellow light 272, pyrrole Orange 278, permanente red light 370, rose 357, quinacridone purple blue 593, ultramarine deep 506, cerulean blue 535, turquoise blue 522, viridian 616, permanent green 662, permanente yellow green 633 , which brand you recommed to buy in aliexpress between cotman, sonnet or white night ? In Brazil all watercolors brands are expensive and pentel anda sakura koi is seller as a professional brand by stores, here the white nigth is more expensive than cotman by winsor and newton the sets. Have a great week

Thank you very much for this great comparison, I always though Ladoga is the same paint as white nights except chipper pigment (no cadnium or cobalts). Some say Ladoga may be less pigmented but cannot see any difference from your swatches. Sonnet has a different synthetic binder, you can see the paint gets shiny when its placed in thick layer. I have some yellows from white nights that match the Ladoga like yellow with same pigment py154. Also seen some other violet rose in white nights set you can buy. White nights also rename their paints for some reason. I also noticed that pigment seem to change for the same paint like indigo, mine has PV 3 but ive seen some listing it as PV55 or PV18. Not sure if they make mistakes on their charts or change the composition for lightfastness. Some list indigo as 2* one was 3*. There are some consistency issues.

תודה לך על הסקירה המעניינת, מחזיקה סט של white nights tubes. עד כמה שידוע לי, ההבדלים בין רמת אומן ורמת סטודנט בתכולת הצבע ובאיכותו, תלויה לא רק בזהות הפיגמט אלא גם בתוספים שונים. כמו חומר מאחה (לרוב דבק ערבי) וחומרים נוספים. האם לסוגי התוספים ולכמויות אין השפעה על איכות הצבע בין הרמות השונות? תודה

interesting comparison, thanks a lot! re sonnet vs white nights, I've heard they are less durable, fade out faster if exposed to light. I am a beginner though, and I bought a set of white nights when I was back to Russia recently. btw the brand "Ladoga" is pronounced in a different way, with the stress on the first syllable, lAdoga (like in "cut" only a bit longer) and "o" is more like neutral vowel, because vowels get reduced when not stressed in the Russian language)). Question: you mentioned toxicity, I am new to that, so what watercolor paints are toxic? how can one find out it? and also vegetarian

Thank you, John! Pigment numbers ... there are people I take great pains to avoid because they keep banging on about them. :-) I've used W&N artists' forever because you know what you'll get and you can get it anywhere, but I've been minded to play about with something different (and cheaper) for a while, so this is useful food for thought.

In Russia, Ladoga is considered a very bad option. There was a scandal around her for the last time. Colors are not similar to "White Nights," dirty, many of 2-5 pigments, and so on. Sorry for my English😅

It may be that as part of a plan to change the formulation of paints in the White Nights line, pigment-wise (moving to using less fugitive pigments across the range), they used the old batches and rebranded them Ladoga as a smart business move (you can't just throw away all those paints you no longer plan to sell in the White Nights line). Just my two cents...

In my experience the Lagoda are 100% the same as White Nights. It's just a cheaper set because lack of the more expensive colours and without the palette. They are marketed to art students. You are correct that is the series 1 pricing. Many of the Sonnet are also exactly the same as White Nights, Sonnet just still include some of the older cheaper non-lightfast ones that are now discontinued open stock. I remember buying Sonnet open stock years ago. It is best to go by product numbers not by name. There can be mistakes in translation from Russian sometimes. This is especially noticeable in the blues, product number is the safest way. Scarlet and Scarlet Light are actually different products. Was 318 and is now 328, PR2 and PR4 been replaced with more light-fast pigments. The Nevskaya Palitra site has the new colour charts. Vermilion Hue has also changed pigment numbers but unfortunately they kept the same product number. I am now buying up some of the less light-fast favourites as I feel they will be discontinued soon. There is still old stock about with similar confusing names. You can see that the white, and the earth tones are identical in all three ranges. I have tested for years, there is no difference. I recommend buying a Sonnet and Ladoga set, merging them and adding any you fancy from open stock White Nights. PS the new Paul Rubens set is definitely repackaged Sonnet, depending on price is worth picking up for the pallette which works out about £2 more.

Welp, your sound is off. I can barely hear anything. (and if I turn my sound up higher than this, my neighbours would be deafened by my notification sounds)

Living in Russia, I can say that you cannot trust a Russian manufacturer, in our country people are not rich and cannot afford expensive paints, but I want to work with professional materials, so manufacturers like to mix cheaper pigments in cadmium without indicating this fact on the packaging and call them professional. You should never trust a Russian manufacturer.