Ink Review: Diamine Orange

Diamine Orange is one of Diamine's standard line, and has been around for a while. I purchased my bottle of Orange from Cult Pens. Orange ink is one of the harder ink colors to get just right, and it's hard to find orange inks that have sheen. 

The bottle: 

I love 30 ml bottles. They are the perfect size for me-small enough that I don't worry about buying a whole bottle, but plenty of ink to do a thorough ink review and have a little bit left over. I always put a 3-hole punch reinforcer sticker and a quick swipe of ink on the lid to make the correct ink bottle easier to find. 

The color...

Orange is a medium orange, but leans a little bit more toward red orange rather than classic orange. Seasonally, I would use this ink in the summer.

When you put Orange down in large swabs on Tomoe River paper, the ink really shows off its underlying red tone.

I was completely surprised by the sheen the ink drops showed. I didn't expect this ink to have any sheen.

Feathering: Orange only Feathered on Baron Fig paper, but did great on the other papers. 

Ghosting (show through): Orange had low to medium ghosting on all of the papers.

Shading and Sheen: I didn't really notice any shading with this ink. There was the tiniest bit of shading on Tomoe River paper in the larger nibs, but not much. There is a little bit of gold sheen, but only on large swabs on Tomoe River paper.

Bleeding: Orange only bled on Baron Fig paper, but it bled in every nib size. I wouldn't recommend this ink on Baron Fig paper. It did not bleed on any of the other papers.

Inks for comparison, left to right: Diamine Pumpkin, Diamine Orange, and Akkerman #16 Oranje Boven. I think the closest ink to Orange is Oranje Boven, but Oranje Boven has more sheen and is a little bit less red.

Left to right: Montblanc Lucky Orange, Pelikan Edelstein Mandarin, and Sailor Jentle Apricot.

Longer writing...

I found Orange to have a nice flow. It wrote smoothly in a medium nib on Tomoe River paper. 

Overall, I thought Orange is a nice orange, but I was expecting a more classic orange rather than a red orange. In writing, the ink didn't show much shading at all, and didn't have any sheen. It is a good classic ink if you aren't looking for any special properties.

Disclaimer: I purchased this ink myself, and all photos and opinions are my own. There are no affiliate links on this page.