My Favorite Fountain Pen Inks of 2025

2025 has been a wild year: I started Bottle and Plume, which has been growing much faster than I anticipated. That means I've been having a blast making fountain pen ink mystery boxes and selling my favorite pens, fountain-pen friendly paper, inks, and accessories.

I've gotten to use a lot of fountain pen ink this year, and I have some clear favorites. I'll break these into categories so you can quickly pick what you're interested in.

 

Best Black Fountain Pen Ink

For those in the know, this will be uncontroversial: my favorite black ink of 2025 is Platinum Carbon Black (you might see it affectionately shortened to "PCB" on Reddit's r/fountainpens). It's a phenomenally well-behaved permanent (pigment) black, perfect for addressing envelopes, writing notes, or other applications where you want your ink to be waterproof.

Though it's extremely dark when it goes onto paper, it dries a bit lighter, with a greyish sheen that looks great and doesn't hurt readability. It's completely waterproof, with a drying time and time-to-waterproofness that is unmatched:

 

Best Business Blue Fountain Pen Ink

Octopus Write & Draw: Blue Koi has turned into a standard for me. I always have a pen inked with it; anytime I need a permanent pigment ink that's also a beautiful color, I know the Write & Draw line has me covered.

 

Best Green Fountain Pen Ink

Wearingeul's For Whom the Bell Tolls is a stunning green ink with red shading. Wearingeul inks are a perpetual favorite in the online fountain pen community, and for good reason: they make a huge line of amazing, creative, beautiful inks. That said, you'll often want a broader nib (medium, broad, or stub) to really see and appreciate the ink effects. That's not a shortcoming of Wearingeul, though – it's true of all fountain pen inks.

Runners-up: Octopus Barock Jade, Anderillium Kingfisher Green, Taccia Ukiyo-e Hokusai Sabimidori.

 

Best Dark Red Fountain Pen Ink

Taccia's earth-red Hokusai Benitsuchi fountain pen ink is a gorgeous, earthy red. I find the whole Ukiyo-e line stunning and underrated.

 

Best Orange Fountain Pen Ink

Wearingeul's Siddartha fountain pen ink is an absolutely stunning orange. There are many great oranges, but I find this one especially beautiful.

Runner up: I can't deny that I love Noodler's Southwest Sunset (formerly called "Apache Sunset"). It's a beautiful orange with great shading. That said, I won't be reordering or restocking Noodler's inks anymore, so once they're gone, they're gone.

 

Best Red Fountain Pen Ink

Laban's Ares Red fountain pen ink is a lovely shade of red for a romantic letter or a heartfelt journal entry. It's a classic dye-based red ink, and I practically can't keep it in stock because it just hits that "perfect, useable red" spot for so many fountain pen writers.

Runners-up: Wearingeul Dracula, Wearingeul Captain Hook

 

Best Yellow Fountain Pen Ink

My favorite yellow fountain pen ink this year has been Rohrer & Klingner Helianthus. I always say that it's as dark-yellow as you can get without being orange, and it's certainly as light as you can get while still keeping your writing readable.

 

Best Purple Fountain Pen Ink

My wife is a connoisseur of purple fountain pen inks (and purple...everything, really), and this year I gave her lots of purple fountain pen ink samples to try. Her clear favorite was Diamine Monboddo's Hat. She has this perpetually loaded into her (violet, of course) Platinum Plaisir and I don't think she'll ever want another fountain pen or ink. Enough said!

Best Sheening Fountain Pen Ink

There are so many amazing sheening fountain pen inks, but my favorite line is Octopus Fluids' Sheening line (named after mythical creatures). Over the past few years, sheening fountain pen inks have exploded in popularity. Some combinations, like blue-with-red-sheen and red-with-green-sheen are immensely popular, and available from many different fountain pen ink manufacturers.

But Octopus Fluids has some amazingly original combinations in their sheening line. Take, for example, Medusa: a purple base color with green sheen. It's a stunning and unique combination (and the inverse is available in their Goblin ink).

Truly wild and magical.

 

Best Certified Document Fountain Pen Ink

How fun is that? I mean, who makes a magenta document ink? Rohrer & Klingner does! Their line gives you a lot of options for mixing custom ink colors from their base colors, so it's worth checking out.

 

Best Shimmer Fountain Pen Ink

You knew there was going to be another wearingeul, didn't you? They're known for their shimmer inks, and I find Wayfarer to be an underrated stunner.

Best Teal Fountain Pen Ink

Is it teal? Or dark turquoise? I have no idea, but Anderillium's Banded King Shoemaker Butterfly Blue is a gorgeous fountain pen ink; one of my absolute favorites. And they're a small, US-based company with a real focus on eco-friendly production and packaging. What's not to love?

 

Best Brown Fountain Pen Ink

I used to see brown fountain pen inks posted on Reddit and think, "yikes, who would actually want such a boring color?" 6 months later I was building a steady collection, evaluating fine brown ink like a sommelier sniffing a $400 Bordeaux.

 

Wildcard Fountain Pen Ink Pick

Taccia's Sharaku Natane fountain pen ink is a stunner. A wild, unique dark-yellow color that I just want to stare at once it's on the page.

 

Best Sky Blue Fountain Pen Ink

 

 

Look at this beautiful sky-blue! Officially Kuretake calls this Meiji-no-iro Shimbashi-Iro ink a turquoise, but I find it to be the perfect sky-blue ink. The whole "cafe" line from Kuretaki (meiji no iro) line is gorgeous and worth a look.

 

Best Grey Fountain Pen Ink

A lot of people will just dilute a black ink with water to make a perfectly serviceable grey, but a real grey can be a beautiful thing. Kaweco's Smoky (or Smokey?) grey is one of those inks.

Runner up: Anderillium Ink makes the beautiful Shoebill Stork Grey.

I hope that's been fun! If you don't want to buy full bottles of all of these inks, I sell samples of many inks (one day, all inks that I carry!). But the best way to get a selection of fountain pen inks to try is to grab one of my fountain pen ink sample mystery boxes! They change every ~month and are a lot of fun, including inks that I don't carry at Bottle and Plume yet.