Two trends collided in 2026, and paint-by-numbers kits ended up sitting right in the middle of them. Personalized gifts are booming. So is the at-home craft hobby scene. A custom kit made from your own photo happens to check both boxes at once, which explains why the category has quietly become one of the more popular gift ideas of the year.
The numbers back this up. The global DIY craft kits market was valued at $14.5 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $27 billion by 2033, a 9% annual growth rate, according to a 2025 report from FutureDataStats. Personalized gifts are moving even faster in relative terms: Technavio projects that the market will grow from $30.79 billion in 2025 to $33.49 billion in 2026, with photo-personalized products as the fastest-growing segment at roughly 12% annual growth. Paint-by-numbers kits sell because they’re both a gift and an activity, and right now that combination is exactly what people are shopping for.
So which companies are actually worth your money? We looked at seven, starting with the one we think does it best.
What to look for when choosing a paint-by-numbers company
Not every kit is built the same way, and the differences show up fast once you start painting. Canvas quality matters more than people expect. Linen holds paint and detail better than cotton, especially on kits made from a personal photo where fine lines carry the resemblance. Pigment coverage matters too. Thin, chalky paint means multiple coats and visible brush strokes, while a well-made kit covers in one pass.
Customization is the other differentiator worth checking before you buy. Some companies only offer pre-designed templates. Others will convert an uploaded photo into a full numbered canvas, which is the entire appeal for anyone buying a gift tied to a specific memory or person. Price transparency and a real customer support line matter more than they sound, particularly with custom orders where a mistake in the proofing stage ruins a gift.
There’s also a wellbeing angle that’s easy to dismiss until you’ve tried it. A 2025 randomized controlled trial across four London hospitals, published in the National Library of Medicine’s PMC archive, found that structured group art therapy measurably reduced burnout and mental distress in participants. Painting by numbers isn’t clinical art therapy, but it borrows the same mechanism: a slow, repetitive, low-stakes creative task that gives your brain something to do besides worry.
1. NumberArtist
NumberArtist website
NumberArtist tops this list because it solves the one problem most competitors don’t bother with: turning an actual photo into a kit that still looks like the person or pet in it. The company works with commissioned artists rather than an automated filter, which shows in the finished canvases. Their acrylics are fast-drying and layer well, so a canvas that would take a weekend elsewhere gets finished in an afternoon.
NumberArtist has shipped kits to more than 500,000 customers and backs every order with a 30-day happiness guarantee, which takes some of the risk out of buying a custom product sight unseen. If you want to see how the upload-to-canvas process actually works, you can find out more directly on their product page before ordering.
2. Masterpiece By Numbers
Masterpiece By Numbers website
Masterpiece By Numbers built its catalog differently than most of the field. Instead of stock templates, it licenses designs directly from working artists and pays them royalties on every kit sold, which is a rare model in this space. The company is based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and has racked up more than 12,000 five-star reviews. It also still takes phone orders, a small detail that matters to customers who’d rather talk through a custom request than fill out a web form.
3. Craftoria
Craftoria website
Craftoria leans on sheer variety. The catalog runs past 1,500 designs spread across more than 26 collections, covering everything from landscapes to abstract pattern work. It also carries a dedicated line of Mini Kits for younger painters, which most competitors skip entirely. A loyalty and referral program rewards repeat buyers, which matters in a category where people tend to order more than once a year.
4. ArtistryByNumbers
ArtistryByNumbers website
ArtistryByNumbers starts custom kits at $18.95 and ships free worldwide, which puts it near the affordable end of this list without cutting corners on materials. The linen-textured canvas and high-pigment acrylics hold up well against pricier competitors. Its themed collections lean into recognizable art references, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Edvard Munch-inspired designs alongside mandala patterns, which gives it a slightly more gallery-adjacent feel than most of the field.
5. Schipper
Schipper website
Schipper has been in this category longer than anyone else on this list, with more than 50 years of history as a German heritage brand. Kits are manufactured in southern Germany using eco-friendly materials, and the company’s “Paint Your Darling” line specializes in personalized portraits from a submitted photo. That longevity tracks with the broader market: the global arts and crafts industry grew from $47.35 billion in 2025 to $50.7 billion in 2026, a 7.1% annual increase, according to a 2026 Research and Markets report that named rising demand for personalized products as a key driver.
6. Pink Picasso
Pink Picasso website
Pink Picasso picked up national attention after appearing on Shark Tank, and it’s since been featured on Oprah’s Favorite Things, Good Morning America, and the Today Show. That kind of exposure tends to be a mixed signal. It gets a brand in front of a lot of people fast, but it doesn’t always translate into the strongest per-kit materials. Pink Picasso ships free on orders over $75, which makes it an easy add-to-cart pick for casual gift buyers rather than serious hobbyists.
7. Paint Me Like
Paint Me Like website
Paint Me Like is built almost entirely around custom photo conversion, using proprietary software to map an uploaded image onto a numbered canvas. Customers can choose between 24, 36, or 48 color complexity levels depending on how detailed they want the final piece, plus a choice of stretched or rolled canvas for shipping. If you’re starting from a phone photo rather than a professional print, cleaning up the image first genuinely improves the result. We’ve covered turning a photo into digital art using AI editing tools, and the same prep work applies before submitting a photo to any custom kit company.
Choosing the right fit
Every company on this list can produce a finished canvas. The differences show up in the details: how well a custom photo translates into paint, how many coats it takes to get solid coverage, and whether the company stands behind the order if something goes wrong. Before you upload anything, it’s worth spending a few minutes editing your photos before ordering a custom kit, since a sharper source image almost always produces a cleaner canvas.
With the DIY craft kits market and the personalized gifts market both growing at high single-digit rates through the late 2020s, this isn’t a passing trend. It’s a low-cost way to combine a creative afternoon with a gift that actually means something. Researchers studying structured art therapy have even found measurable stress-relief benefits from the same slow, repetitive creative process a paint-by-numbers kit demands. NumberArtist’s combination of artist-commissioned designs and a 500,000-customer track record is what makes it the strongest place to start.
