Top 10 Best-Selling Fountain Pen Inks of Summer 2026

Since we're coming to the end of the summer, I thought it would be fun to see what the best-selling fountain pen inks were during this season. So I checked: here are the inks and ink sample boxes that Bottle & Plume customers bought most in the Summer of 2026.

The result is a great mix of wildly different inks, though it's heavy in a few of my favorite brands. Maybe because I promote those more, or maybe because the fledgling Bottle and Plume shop isn't ranking well in search results for other brands yet. Either way, Octopus is featured heavily here.

Still, it's a good variety: permanent pigment inks sit beside dramatic sheeners, shimmering fountain pen inks, old-school iron gall, and enough mystery samples to keep a fellow fountain pen nerd busy swatching and writing for months.

One note before we begin: I grouped the related Octopus Write & Draw and Octopus Sheen colors into families so this would remain a useful top ten instead of becoming the Octopus Fluids fan club newsletter (although the sales data is making a strong argument for that). Within those groups, the individual inks remain in descending sales order. The two standard sample boxes were the fifth- and sixth-best-selling individual products overall.

1. Dark Academia Mystery Ink Sample Box

The winner is not a bottle at all. The Dark Academia Mystery Ink Sample Box contains twelve 3mL samples chosen from moody blues, smoky grays, old-library browns, shadowy greens, dusty purples, antique coppers, and deep reds. Most are practical dye inks; a few samples in each one wander into pigment, iron gall, or sheening fountain pen ink territory. There is no shimmer—just colors for forbidden footnotes, rain-darkened libraries, and ordinary Tuesday to-do lists written with suspicious levels of flair anddrama.

2. Octopus Write & Draw Pigment Inks

Blue Koi led the individual ink sales, while Violet Lion and the cool green-blue Petrol Axolotl also made the longer bestseller list.

The Write & Draw inks are permanent pigment inks made specifically for fountain pens: waterproof, lightfast, and much more colorful than the phrase “document ink” usually suggests. They are excellent for envelopes, sketches, field notes, and journal pages expected to survive real life. Just use them regularly and do not let them dry inside the pen; permanence is wonderful on paper but much less charming when it's gumming up your fountain pen's feed.

3. Octopus Sheen Inks

Octopus Fluids more or less took possession of the summer list. The order among its sheening inks was Medusa (purple with green sheen), Dragon (petrol with pink sheen), Mermaid (turquoise with pink sheen), then Djinn (blue).

These inks reward smooth, non-absorbent paper - I prefer Clairefontaine - and a wetter-writing, broader fountain pen nib. The second color comes from concentrated dye rather than glitter particles, so the effect comes from pooled ink and flashes in the light as you move the page. On absorbent paper, expect more of the base color and less spectacle. You want paper with a lot of sizing (coating) - just pick any of the fountain-pen friendly papers here at Bottle and Plume and you'll be good to go.

4. Classic Explorer Ink Sample Box

The Classic Explorer Ink Sample Box—the fifth-best-selling individual product in the raw ranking—contains seven 3mL samples. It is the sensible first stop if you want enough variety to discover something new without turning your desk into a tiny ink laboratory (I don't get it...who wouldn't want that?!).

5. Super Sampler Fountain Pen Ink Mystery Box

Immediately behind it in the raw ranking was the Super Sampler Fountain Pen Ink Mystery Box: twelve different 3mL samples spanning practical, bright, classic, and adventurous inks (now that's more like it!). This is for the person who has accepted that choosing the next ink is half the pleasure of a fountain pen obsession.

6. Wearingeul Daddy-Long-Legs

Wearingeul Daddy-Long-Legs is a desaturated pastel pink with strong shading and gold shimmer, inspired by Jean Webster's novel. It is soft at first glance and far more interesting once the light moves across the gold shimmer particles left behind on the page. Another winner from Wearingeul.

7. Wearingeul The Phantom of the Opera

Wearingeul The Phantom of the Opera pairs a deep cobalt-blue base with pink sheen. The color is readable enough for a full journal page, but on good paper it develops exactly the sort of dramatic "stage lighting" effect its name promises.

8. Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo

Some classics earn their reputation. Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-budo is a bright wine-purple—named for the crimson glory vine—with generous flow, lovely shading, and a golden sheen that can appear on the right paper (again, try broader, wetter-writing fountain pen nibs to get more of this effect). I personally love this ink, and think it deserves its popularity. If you want the longer version, I wrote a full Yama-budo ink review.

9. Rohrer & Klingner Salix

Rohrer & Klingner Salix is the sober counterpoint to all that sheen: a permanent, lightfast blue iron-gall ink for signatures, correspondence, and notes you would prefer your descendants to be able to read. It asks for a little care—clean the pen regularly and don't let it dry on a cheap steel nib—but rewards that attention with beautiful, hassle-free, practical permanence.

10. Octopus Barock Jade

Octopus Barock Jade is a saturated blue-green turquoise with a light sheen. It comes from Octopus Fluids' revival of the old Dresden Barock ink tradition, but it does not feel like an archival reenactment. It is dark, intense, usable, and very much alive on the page. It's an extremely wet, well-lubricated fountain pen ink, so it's great for finer nibs too. For context, I find it too wet out of a flex nib; the ink just pools on the page in giant dark-green globs. Which, on second thought, is kind of fantastic. But I'm getting carried away; you've been warned!

What Summer 2026 Tells Us

I love my fellow fountain pen obsessives who make up the Bottle & Plume customer base: y'all did not spend the whole summer buying ten nearly identical blues. You went wild, choosing inks that do something: survive water, throw a second color across good paper, summon the memory of a favorite book, soak your letters in glitter dust, or make the next fountain pen fill a surprise. You're living your fountain pen life to the fullest, and it makes me happy.

If you are unsure where to begin, the sales data gives a pleasantly low-risk answer: start with samples. If you already know what you want, follow the page you cannot stop looking at. That is usually the ink you will actually use—and the whole point is to put it in a pen, open a notebook, and actually write something.

Happy writing!