Best Gel Food Colours for Baking, Buttercream & Cookie Painting
Liquid colours water down your icing and never go dark enough. Gel colours are the fix. Here is why concentrated gels win, how much to use, and whether to start with six colours or commit to the full forty.
6 min readBy CakeyTops Team
If your buttercream turns out pastel when you wanted bold, or your royal icing goes runny the moment you add colour, the culprit is almost always liquid food colouring. Concentrated gels fix both problems. Here is why gel wins, how much to use, and whether to start small or buy the full set.
Gel vs liquid food colouring: what is the difference?
Liquid food colouring is mostly water with a little dye. To reach a strong shade you have to add a lot, which thins buttercream and makes royal icing run. Gel (or paste) food colouring is highly concentrated, so a tiny amount delivers deep colour without changing the consistency of your icing. For anything beyond pale pastels, gel is the right tool.
Gel vs liquid food colouring
Factor
Gel / paste
Liquid
Colour strength
Very high — deep shades easily
Low — struggles past pastel
Effect on icing
Minimal — keeps consistency
Thins and can split icing
Amount needed
A cocktail-stick dab
Many drops
Best for
Buttercream, royal icing, sugarpaste, painting
Pale tints, drinks, batters
How much gel colour should you use?
Start with the smallest amount — a dab on the end of a cocktail stick — and build up. Gels are strong, and it is far easier to add more than to fix an over-coloured batch. Two things to remember:
Colours deepen on drying. Mix slightly lighter than your target shade and let it develop, especially with reds and blacks.
Rest deep colours. For bold reds and blacks, colour the icing and leave it 30–60 minutes — the shade intensifies without adding more gel (and more gel can taste bitter).
Which gel food colour set should you buy?
For most home bakers, a six-colour rainbow set is the right starting point — you can mix most shades you need from a strong core palette. If you decorate regularly, run a small business, or constantly need a specific shade, the full set removes the mixing guesswork and the mid-order panic when you run out.
Recommended Supplies
Our gel food colour picks
Sugarflair is a UK decorating staple — highly concentrated and reliable. Start with the rainbow six, or step up to the full Spectral library if you colour regularly.
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Used in our kitchenDecorating supplies
Sugarflair Rainbow Gel Food Colours (Set of 6)
Six concentrated gel food colours for buttercream, royal icing, sugarpaste, and cookie painting.
Sugarflair is a UK decorating staple. This six-colour starter set is highly concentrated, so a cocktail-stick dab goes a long way, and the colours deepen as they dry — which is exactly what you want for strong buttercream tones and deep PYO palette colours that still read after a wet brush.
Why we recommend it
The set we would point a new decorator to before they commit to forty individual pots — enough to mix most shades you actually need.
Colouring buttercream, royal icing, and sugarpaste
The full 40 x 25g Spectral colour library in storage boxes — every deep, concentrated shade on hand.
The complete Spectral range for decorators who colour regularly. Having the full deep-shade library on hand makes it far easier to match exact brand colours and to mix the saturated tones that paint-your-own palettes need to stay visible on white icing.
Why we recommend it
Worth the jump from the starter set once colouring is a weekly job and you are tired of running out of one specific shade mid-order.
Colour depth matters even more for paint-your-own cookies. Painting with a wet brush dilutes whatever colour is in the palette, so pale swatches vanish on white icing. Deep, saturated gels are what give a PYO palette colours strong enough to actually show up. If you make PYO kits, our PYO Paint Palette Maker even flags palette colours that are too light to paint — and the same logic applies when you are colouring the royal icing base. See the full method in our paint-your-own cookies guide.
Free Tool
PYO Paint Palette Maker
Design edible paint palettes with colours deep enough to actually paint — free, with built-in colour-depth checks.
Sugarflair is one of the most reliable UK gel/paste brands — highly concentrated, so a small amount gives deep colour without thinning your icing. A rainbow set of six is the best starting point for home bakers; the full Spectral set of 40 suits regular decorators and small businesses.
Is gel food colouring better than liquid?+
For icing and decorating, yes. Gel is concentrated, so it delivers deep colour without watering down buttercream or making royal icing run. Liquid colouring is fine for pale tints, drinks, and batters but struggles to reach bold shades.
How much gel food colouring do you use?+
Start with a dab on the end of a cocktail stick and build up. Gels are strong, and colours deepen as they dry, so mix slightly lighter than your target shade and let it develop before adding more.
Can you use gel food colour to paint cookies?+
Yes — diluted with a little clear alcohol or water, gel colour can be painted onto cookies. For paint-your-own cookies, deep saturated colours are essential because a wet brush dilutes them; pale colours disappear on white icing.
Why is my coloured icing not dark enough?+
Either you are using liquid colour (which cannot reach deep shades without thinning the icing) or you have not let the colour develop. Switch to concentrated gel, mix slightly lighter than your target, and rest deep colours like red and black for 30–60 minutes to intensify.
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