Which Crayola Supplies Should Your School Actually Order? A Guide for Buying Art Materials Without Wasting the Budget

Crayola is one of those brands that shows up on school supply lists every single year. But here's the thing nobody tells you: there's no universal "best" Crayola order. What a kindergarten teacher needs is completely different from what a high school art program needs. And if you order based on assumptions instead of actual usage, you'll waste money either way.

I learned this the hard way. In my first year handling supply orders for a K-8 school (2019), I made the classic rookie mistake: I ordered what the previous coordinator had ordered, minus the stuff that looked "unnecessary." Turned out, the stuff I cut was the stuff teachers actually used every day. Roughly $470 in wasted budget and a lot of confused classroom teachers later, I now maintain our school's supply checklist. I've personally made—and documented—seven significant ordering mistakes since 2019, totaling somewhere around $1,400 in wasted budget. Maybe $1,300, I'd have to check the spreadsheet. Either way, this guide is the checklist I wish I'd had before that first purchase.

Through those mistakes, I've learned that most supply orders fall into one of four scenarios:

1. General classroom use — basic supplies for 20–30 kids, used across subjects
2. Dedicated art program — a real art curriculum that needs paints, specialty markers, maybe clay
3. Budget-restricted purchase — someone said "get the most for the money" without a clear picture of how supplies will be used
4. STEAM classrooms — art is part of a broader STEM-integrated curriculum

Each one has a different answer. Here's what I've learned.

Scenario 1: General classroom use — go simple, go washable

If your supplies are going into general classrooms (K–5, maybe middle school homerooms), you want versatility, not specialty. The exact right answer here is usually the 20 crayola markers class pack.

Why 20? It's enough markers for a class to share without constant fighting over colors, and the broad-line washable formula means the inevitable desk drawing, hand print, and shirt stain incidents don't turn into parent emails. Washability isn't just about laundry, either. It's about protecting classroom surfaces, which saves teachers cleanup time.

When I compared our washable vs. non-washable purchases side by side at the end of the school year, the washable option cost a little more upfront, but it prevented property issues that were way more expensive. Even with the higher sticker price, the washable markers had a lower total cost of ownership. That contrast completely changed how I think about school supply budgets.

Alongside the markers, get:

• Colored pencils in 12-count (the 24-count is nice, but most kids consistently use 5–6 colors)
• Standard 24-count crayons
• One bucket of air-dry clay if your grade level does any tactile projects

Practical note on paper: heavy marker use means you need the right paper weight. Standard copy paper (20 lb bond / 75 gsm) will bleed through with markers. You want at least 80 lb text (120 gsm) for art projects. I didn't know this at first, and we went through a whole ream of copy paper before someone explained it to me.

Scenario 2: Dedicated art program — this is where acrylic paint earns its spot

If you're running a dedicated art classroom, your supply list changes completely. This is where crayola paint acrylic becomes a core item.

Acrylic is the right choice when students are working on canvas, when projects last more than one class period, and when colors need to stay bright after drying. Tempera is fine for quick crafts, but it doesn't hold up the same way.

Things I've learned the hard way about acrylic paint:

1. Color consistency matters between batches. The industry standard color tolerance is Delta E < 2 for brand-critical work—that's the threshold where a color difference becomes imperceptible to the trained eye. If you order the same colors across different fiscal quarters, check that they still match. It matters less for student art than for commercial printing, but it matters if you're storing paint for a class-wide project.

2. Buy larger bottles of the colors you'll actually use: white, black, red, blue, yellow. I once ordered a fancy six-pack of mixed colors for a project that ended up using only the white and the blue. The other four bottles sat until the paint dried out. That's the total cost of ownership problem in miniature: the per-bottle price was fine; the cost per use was terrible.

Also, paper matters for acrylic. Heavier paper (100 lb text / about 150 gsm) is a better match than standard sketch paper. And if your students are doing mixed-media or printmaking, budget for that separately.

Scenario 3: Tight budget — don't fall for the unit price trap

This is where I see schools waste the most money. When the budget is tight, the instinct is to buy the cheapest per-unit option. But the cheapest quote is almost never the lowest total cost.

Let me give you an example from outside art supplies. When I was pricing printed labels for our supply bins, an online quote came in $50 less than a local print shop. But after shipping, setup fees, and a rush charge, the "cheap" quote ended up costing $30 more. Online printers like 48 Hour Print work great for standard products and reasonable quantities, but when we needed custom die-cut shapes, local was actually cheaper and faster. That's the classic TCO trap: the sticker price is just the beginning.

Same logic applies to classroom supplies. Before you buy the cheapest option, count these costs:

• Replacement frequency — cheaper products don't last as long
• Teacher time — distributing, sorting, and cleaning up low-quality supplies takes time
• Property damage — non-washable products staining surfaces is a real cost
• Disposal cost — broken caps and dried-out products going to landfill

Take paint as an example. The cheapest acrylic might dry out faster, require more coats (so students use more per project), and be less washable. You end up paying more per finished painting. Which means the "expensive" paint is actually cheaper over the school year.

At a school I helped, they switched from the absolute cheapest option to a standard line. The first order cost about 30% more—maybe 25%, I'd have to check—but the supplies lasted through spring instead of dying in January. They ordered once, not three times. Don't just compare price tags. Compare cost per school year.

Scenario 4: STEAM classrooms — art supplies meet technology

This is the scenario people understand least. If you're integrating art into STEM—the "A" in STEAM—your art supplies need to work in a different context.

For STEAM projects, the essentials are still washable markers and acrylic paint, because students use them to label prototypes, color-code diagrams, and finish builds. But there are a few extra considerations:

Transportation. When kids move between a science lab and an art room, supplies need to travel. One teacher at our school uses an insulated lunch box—one of those rugged yeti lunch box style carriers—to bring marker sets and paint bottles between classrooms. The insulation keeps paint from getting too warm in transit, and the seal protects against leaks. Sounds like overkill, but it's been genuinely useful.

Technology planning. If you're budgeting for 3D printers, know that the supply chain is completely separate from art supplies. I get teachers asking "how does a 3d printer work?" all the time, and the answer—filament, heated bed, slicing software—has nothing to do with markers and paint. Keep those budget lines separate. Same for electronics: when your curriculum touches circuits, an ohms law calculator helps students compute current, voltage, and resistance without friction. But that's not an art supply purchase.

The point is: in STEAM classrooms, art supplies support the engineering stuff. They need to be reliable, compatible, and easy to transport. Don't over-invest in specialty art materials if they're only being used as tools for other projects.

How to tell which scenario you're in

Still not sure? Here are four questions that will get you there:

1. Are the people using these supplies art specialists? If no → Scenario 1: keep it simple and washable.
2. Do students work on paintings, canvases, or multi-day projects? If yes → Scenario 2: invest in acrylic paint and heavier paper.
3. Is your procurement process quantity-driven ("how many units per dollar")? If yes → you're being pushed into Scenario 3. Reframe the conversation around cost per school year, not cost per unit.
4. Is art a supporting activity for science or engineering? If yes → Scenario 4: keep it simple, portable, and separate from tech budgets.

(Should mention: there's overlap. A middle school art teacher in a STEAM school might sit between Scenarios 2 and 4. In that case, prioritize the washable basics first, then add acrylic.)

Bottom line

Choosing Crayola supplies for your school comes down to understanding what you actually need, not what looks best in a catalog. The framework that saves the most money is total cost thinking: cost per use, not price per unit.

If you take one thing from this guide, let it be this: I wasted roughly $470 in my first year because I ordered based on assumptions instead of asking teachers how they actually use the supplies. Now our school's checklist includes a simple pre-order question for every item: "What will this be used for, and how often?" If the answer is "not sure," we don't order it. At least, that's been my experience across seven years of school supply procurement. It's saved us from repeating more mistakes than I can count.

The right Crayola supplies for your school are the ones that end up in students' hands, get used, and hold up long enough to justify the purchase. That's the ultimate test.