What are the best acrylic paints?

Right, in my element here.... Cryla is NOT student quality acrylic.  System3 may be so described, but still offers strong and vibrant colours.  Cryla is heavy-bodied acrylic, and one of the first introduced to the UK market; it remains one of the best.  Other good ones are Winsor and Newton professional grade acrylics; Golden acrylics; and many painters use Liquitex or AV (neither of which I've tried so far as I remember, so I can't speak of them). There is also a finely-ground acrylic called Chromacolour, available only online (and why they restrict their distribution this way, I really don't know).  They're available in pots and most colours, though not all, are also available in tubes, or at least were.  The pots are good for just about any application. All of the paints I've mentioned here have good reputations; I've tried four of these brands, and I believe you can get subtle and strong colours with all of them.   As the colour generally dries flat, blending isn't the problem it would be with oil if it dried quickly.  You just paint over, scumble, or glaze.   If you're getting dull, listless colour - which isn't the usual complaint: the issue with acrylics in the past was that people thought them brash (as they often were) and crude -  my suggestion would be that you change your technique - get your basic shapes and colours down, then build on them, with your more vibrant colours - the cadmiums, in particular, reds, yellows, lemons.  If you use earth colours, use the richest ones you can lay hands on, and preferably the most transparent - the siennas, Venetian Red, hot colours - you can always tone those down if you need to, whereas brightening up a colour which is just dark and dull is more difficult, even in this medium, in which you can just paint out an awful lot if you want to.  Extending the drying time wouldn't help, necessarily - you might try to rescue a dull patch of yellow ochre and green, say, with brighter colour; only to find that you've mixed it into a sludge.  But if you do want to extend drying time, there are flow improvers and retarders which help - having said which, I've had a bottle of retarder, still half full, for over 40 years: I've hardly ever needed it.  Don't be hesitant about using whites - the more opaque the better: Winsor and Newton make an excellent Titanium White in their artists' range, and Chromacolour's Chroma White has saved the day for me many a time, as it adds body and strength to the warmer colours, the reds and oranges, and painted underneath a yellow, the yellow glazed on top, can produce fantastic results.   I can't advise you not to use Open/interactive acrylics, because I've not used them myself - on the other hand, I've never felt any need for them, and a set of those will set you back a bob or two, whereas if you already have a basic collection of Cryla and System3, I'd say just gradually build on those, buying in W & N professional (not Galeria), Chromacolour, and Golden, as the chance arises.   Show us an example or two of your less than vibrant acrylics, and we might be able to help a bit more.  

Double posted, somehow - probably bashed the space-bar too hard...

Hello Steve, I paint in acrylics and started out with the large tubed cheaper varieties, but nowadays mostly use Liquitex heavy body. I also have a few W&N professional, and a couple of Golden acrylics.  Also have some of the cheaper brands, which I mainly use for initial surface washes, or under colours, or sketching out the picture. I guess part of the brand you choose or prefer is down to how you paint - thinly or thickly. I'm not usually patient when it comes to drying time.. (often have a hairdryer to hand!), but if I want a slightly longer drying time than acrylics usually allow, I add a bit of matt medium (Galleria in my case). I also use this if I want to add glaze layers. I haven't tried other mediums with acrylics (to slow or speed up drying time) as yet. Also, haven't painted in oils, so I can't offer a comparison experience there! In terms if vibrancy,..  one of my favourite acrylic artists is Hashim Akib. I think he uses System 3, which isn't one of the expensive ones, so goes to show that you can get the effect you want without having to fork out for the highest quality piant.

I use Cryla heavy body and Winsor and Newton professional acrylics. I’ve also used Pip/Wallace Seymour, but invariably I go back to Winsor and Newton and Cryla. I’ve recently ordered from Jackson’s their own Titanium white, I do use a lot of it, also some fluid acrylics....I’m awaiting delivery right now so I can’t comment on them. Looking forward to trying them out.

I'm often disappointed in my acrylic paintings, as they seem to be dull.  However I think this is my fault as I have not accounted for the way that they dry darker.  I get better results if I use more colours straight from the tube, or use oil over the top.  Using gloss medium also seems to brighten them up a bit.

Any paint that's mixed with water, and come to that any paint mixed with oil, is likely to sink a bit when the medium evaporates, cures/ dries.  That's one of the reasons for varnish - it brings the colours back up, as well as protecting the surface of the paint from the build-up of dirt over the years.  If a painting looks better on a screen than it does in "real life", it's because you've got the light from whatever photographed it bouncing back from the picture, enhancing the brightness and depth of the colours. Varnish achieves the same end, and performs an aesthetic as well as protective function. So work in bright, intense, strong colours: use an acrylic medium with your paint rather than only water; and apply a coat of varnish when done.  Or glaze them - double entendre there: put 'em behind glass.  The darkening and dulling elements are inevitable, so we have to develop ways of counteracting them.  Most of us do that in time out of informed instinct, so our paintings might still not be works of genius - he purred modestly - but at least won't disappoint us by looking duller than we intended.  

Oh, and Steve - ignore my faux-outrage: I'm very fond of Cryla, if you can be fond of a paint.  It was the first acrylic paint I ever used, 50 years ago, and I'm sure enabled me to make the progress I did, whereas had I had only the lower grades of paint I would have struggled more and longer.  System3 is not a bad paint at all - same maker.  We had an artist on here a couple of years ago named Ade Brownlow, who worked with System3 and produced, as some will remember, fantastic landscapes with it.  It's just a little bit more fluid than I really like, but now and then it more than comes into its own. And do take a look at Chromacolour - I use it a lot for final touches on a painting, lifting bits that otherwise look too uninteresting.  

Satin can be good.  If applying a matte varnish, I'm TOLD (I've never done it: I don't like matte varnish) that it's a good idea to apply a gloss varnish first, and then a matte varnish on top.  Why - I have no idea!