The Answer: It depends.
The four main elements in determining how long it will take your acrylic paint to dry are:
- Thickness of application
- Humidity
- Temperature
- Air Movement
- Absorbency of your surface
Acrylic paint dries when the water evaporates from the paint. Pretty simple really.
How do you define dry?
When it comes to acrylic paint, there are two ways to define the word dry.
Is is dry to the touch? Meaning if you lightly touch it against the sleeve of your designer white shirt no paint will come off onto the shirt. Hey! What are you doing wearing nice shirts around your paint anyway!
The other type of dry is what I call all the way dry. The official name for this is cured. This means not only is the paint dry to the touch, but all the subsequent layers underneath are also dry.
How long does it take for an acrylic painting to cure ? (i.e. to become completely dry?). Well it depends. It depends on the temperature, humidity, absorbency of the surface, and air flow in the room or environment.
Here where I live in the humid southeastern USA, it takes about a week to cure my paintings. But again, it depends on how think the paint was applied. If you live in the desert, it might take only a few days to cure.
The Golden Artist Paints website says this about curing:
“The second stage of drying is the time for the entire thickness of the film to be thoroughly dry. That is, the time required for all of the water and solvent (used as freeze-thaw stabilizer and coalescent) to evaporate and leave the film. This is a most crucial time frame, as the ultimate physical properties, such as adhesion, hardness and clarity, do not fully develop until the film is near complete dryness. For very thin films, this time may be a few days, while films of 1/4 inch thickness or more will take months and even years to be completely dry.”
Years !! Yikes! That was news to me. Don’t worry, for most of you, who hang your paintings indoors on a wall, a week or two of drying is perfectly adequate time to cure your painting. Few people paint 1/4 inch thick. I have seen it, but only a few times. Here is what the Liquitex folks have to say about cure time:
“Cure time is when the acrylic film is fully stable, close to its maximum durability, water resistant and less vulnerable to attack by mild solvents. This usually takes at least three days for thin applications and may take much longer (up to two weeks or more) for thick applications such as with Liquitex Super Heavy Body Color .”
These paint chemists crack me up. Read their websites long enough and you begin to feel like you are reading something from the Department of Homeland Security. “vunerable to attack by mild solvents”. Scary. Last time my one of my paintings was attacked it was by a not so mild pointy nosed blond snob at a gallery reception who just didn’t like my work. I think from now on I shall refer to her as a blond solvent.
How to tell if your painting is cured?
Regardless of who you ask, the bottom line is that it simply takes longer than you think for your acrylic painting to completely cure into a stable, archival condition.
In simple terms, give your painting a few days after completion before varnishing or wrapping for shipment.
Place your hand against the painting, does the painting feel cool, damp, or soft in anyway? Then it is not finished drying and it has not cured yet. Try moving it inside where you live or work. If the air is warm and comfortable for a human, your acrylic painting will like it too.
Is your studio too cold?
It is important to note that most artist acrylic paint manufacturers advice that a studio under about 50 degrees Fahrenheit ( 10 degrees Celsius) the paint may not cure properly thus resulting in cracking, peeling, or other terrible things.
My studio is poorly heated. Although I live in a mostly warm climate, the temperature at night drops below 50F most winter nights. I solve this problem by bringing my paintings inside the house to cure in the winter. Not rocket science.
Experimental Artists Take Note:
Experimental artists probably think they want this type cracking and peeling paint film failure to happen. They might intentionally set their paintings out in the snow to dry. Don’t do it.
This sort of cracking and peeling makes the painting unstable instead of just neat looking. It is better to use gels and medium for make the acrylic appear as though it is cracking, peeling, bubbling. Unstable paint film can lead to all kinds of trouble, like flaking off completely. That is not the kind of texture you are looking for, trust me.
Great post! Just wanted to note that the newer slower drying acrylics like Chroma Interactive and Golden Open will take even longer to cure than conventional acrylics and the process shouldn’t be rushed. I caused a painting surface to crack by trying to speed up the curing process by using a hair dryer!
Also I find that painting on stretched linen or canvas allows the painting to dry & cure faster than when I paint on a panel and paper falls somewhere in between those times.
Great points Jan.
Slow drying paints do indeed take MUCH longer to completely cure.
I am so addicted to my hair dryer, especially in the winter months.
I don’t use the slow-dry in my own studio very often, only when painting more traditionally.
thanks for the comments. Nice to know someone is reading us already since the blog is very new!
Cindy, owner/editor
Acyrlic Paint Review
LOL! Blond Solvent! I gotta remember that.
I live in Australia and use proessional grade Derivan Matisse, Liquitex, and Jo Sonja (which are advertised as craft paints but which are very good quality). I add srying retarder to amm my mixing water because the paints dry IMMEDIATELY!. I mean it’s hard to get them off the brush in time. I have to mix in a lot of retarder and medium if I want to blend. A thick stroke – say 1 mm – will take ten minutes or so to be stable enough to move my lseeve over. Conclusion? Acrylic formula was invented for much colder, wetter countries than Australia. Oh and climate change means most of the USA will be experiencing at least fifty days a year over 100f by 2050.
Hey Thomas,
I can’t imagine using acrylic in that sort of arid climate. I live in the Southeastern United States, very humid by most folks standards.
Do you paint in oils as well? When I paint outside, even in the humid conditions that I am accustomed to, I like oils better. It feels more relaxing to me. We have a big problem with gnats, so I also use tweezers to pick them out of my palette. The slide right out of the oils but not so much with acrylic.
Thanks Cindy, It is winter in Ohio and my studio is 63 when working but drops to below 50 at night. I have a large gesso coated canvas from Michaels. I have noticed when I’m painting and then wipe off to try another color or add one I don’t like and wipe it , I get all the paint coming off back to the gesso surface.
I thought that it might be the temperature. Thanks for comfirming.
Teda,
You are so brave to paint in 63 temps! Do you stand up? To keep blood going and stay warm?
Well I think is was helpful, I have a nerf gun that I spray painted let dry then painted silver on top of that my bottle says 1 hour between coats and I am in a huge rush. I only put 1 coat so I will wait 2 hours tops.
Awwww man…
And this painting is due in two days!
Good tips. I looked up the topic when I made a new technique for building model houses: paint the brick red, wait for it to cure, then add the white mortar paint and immediately wipe it off the surface of the brick. Works well, but sometimes the paint hasn’t fully cured (even when it’s thin enough to still see the mortar work in N scale) so that the “dry” red ends up mixing with the white mortar and turning the wall pink. Blah.
And 63 is balmy, we don’t turn the thermostat above 60 in the winter. Oil is expensive! Mainers wear shorts until it’s 50 (teenage boys about 20 from the looks of some bus stops in the winter).