The Compendium · Warhammer 40,000
The most painted army in the hobby — and still the hardest to make your own.
Every Space Marine army starts with the same question: whose colours? The classic chapters each carry decades of visual identity, and a commission painter's take on them tells you almost everything about the studio — how clean their edge highlights are, how they handle flat power armour, whether their gold reads as metal or as paint.
The schemes below are the ones we see requested most. They range from parade-ground clean to battle-worn grimdark, and every one of them changes character depending on who's holding the brush.
Rich cobalt blue with gold trim and white heraldry. The benchmark scheme: painted clean with crisp edge highlights it looks regal; weathered and chipped it turns into a veteran of a hundred wars. Studios often use it to show off freehand chapter iconography.
The recipe
Deep saturated red shading down to black, with black-and-gold detail. The red is the test — flat red is easy, luminous red is not. Look for gradients that keep the armour glowing without turning orange.
The recipe
Dark forest green, bone-coloured robes, and a monastic mood. The robes are what separate a good commission from a great one — soft, natural cloth shading next to hard armour panels.
The recipe
Unapologetic yellow, one of the hardest colours in miniature painting to get smooth at batch scale. A studio that shows you a coherent Fists army is quietly telling you their painters can handle anything.
The recipe
Black armour, white tabards, red crosses. A natural fit for the grimdark treatment — heavy weathering, muted highlights, battlefield grime — but equally striking painted sharp and heraldic.
The recipe
Roughly a third of commissioned Marine armies use an invented scheme — a client's own chapter. This is where a studio's colour sense matters most: a custom scheme needs the same visual logic the classics have.
Watch
Tutorials from painters we rate, teaching these schemes brush in hand. Each one opens here on click and links back to its creator.
How To Paint Space Marines as Ultramarines for Warhammer 40,000
TableTopReady ↗3 Ways to Speed Paint your Ultramarines for Warhammer 40,000
Duncan Rhodes Painting Academy ↗Warhammer 40,000: How to paint Blood Angels
Warhammer ↗The Gallery
The photo gallery opens as studios license their work to us. Every image we show is a real commissioned miniature, credited and linked to the artist who painted it — no stock, no renders, no AI.
Commissioning
Thinking about your own army in one of these schemes? The Warhammer 40,000 studios in the directory take commissions, or you can describe your project and we'll match you with painters who suit it.