Choosing the best Paint With Diamonds kits is almost entirely a question of subject, because the technical spec barely moves. Every kit in the current Caleb Smith collection is a full-drill Diamond Painting Kit offered in your choice of Round or Square diamonds, and every one is listed as exclusive to the brand.
That is unusually helpful for a buyer. With the variables stripped out, you can pick purely on which image you want to look at on a wall for the next several years. Here are the strongest picks from the stained glass range, grouped by who they suit.
Best overall: Colorful Stained Glass Garden Owl
If you buy one kit, this is the one. The owl design is tagged across Birds, Floral, Nature and Wildlife, which tells you how much is happening in the frame: a bird subject with a botanical surround, so you get both the tight detail of feathers and the broad colour panels of foliage.
Why it works as a first serious kit: the mix of dense and open areas means you can alternate between fiddly sections and satisfying blocks of a single colour. A canvas that is uniformly detailed becomes a grind, and one that is uniformly open becomes boring.
It sits in the same collection as the rest of the range at Paint With Diamonds, so it is easy to compare against the alternatives below.
Best picks by subject
Fantasy
The fantasy lane is the deepest part of the collection, and stained glass suits it because mythical subjects have no photographic reference to be judged against. Five stand out:
- Stained Glass Crystal Unicorn - tagged Fantasy and Mythical. The cleanest silhouette in the group, which makes it the most forgiving to place.
- Stained Glass Dragon And Fairy - two subjects in one frame, so the composition carries more visual interest across a long build.
- Stained Glass Rose Dragon Golden Stars - tagged Fantasy, Floral, Mythical and Nature, the most tag-dense design in the collection and the busiest canvas of the five.
- Stained Glass Celestial Mermaid - the strongest pick if you want cool blues and purples rather than warm tones.
- Stained Glass Butterfly Fairy - the lightest of the fantasy set, with wing panels that read beautifully in square diamonds.
A sixth, Stained Glass Fairy Water Lily, straddles fantasy and florals and is worth a look if you cannot decide between the two lanes.
Wildlife and birds
This is the lane to pick if you want something that suits a living room rather than a craft room. Four are worth naming:
- Stained Glass Hummingbird Cascade - tagged Birds and Wildlife. Small subject, lots of motion, and the kind of design where round diamonds and their light-catching gaps genuinely help.
- Stained Glass Lavender Fox - tagged Animal and Wildlife. A single strong subject in a restricted palette, which makes for a calm and quick-reading canvas.
- Stained Glass Eagle Mountain - tagged Birds, Landscape, Scenery and Wildlife, so it works as both an animal portrait and a landscape.
- Stained Glass Black Cat - the most graphic design in the range. A dark subject against coloured glass gives you the highest contrast of any kit here.
Stained Glass Garden Bunny and Stained Glass Moon Hare round out the group, the first tagged Floral and Nature and the second a quieter nocturnal composition.
Florals and scenery
Three picks here. Stained Glass Kyoto Crane Garden is tagged Floral and Nature and is the most architectural composition in the collection. Stained Glass Havana Hibiscus Balcony brings the warmest palette of the range. Stained Glass Red Apple Orchard is the simplest, and the best pick if you want large tracts of a single colour to work through while watching something.
Stained Glass Sea Turtle Sunburst, tagged Landscape and Scenery, is the outlier and the best marine subject on offer. Stained Glass Moonlit Swan is the elegant, low-contrast option.
For anyone shopping this range as a present rather than for themselves, our art gift guide covers how to pick artwork for someone else without guessing wrong.
For a specific recipient
Stained Glass Angel Of Lilies is the only kit tagged Religious and Spiritual, which makes it the obvious pick for a faith-based gift. Rainbow Stained Glass Horse is the one to buy for a horse person. Stained Glass Black Cat lands for a Halloween-leaning household, and Stained Glass Crystal Unicorn for a younger recipient.
Specific beats expensive when you are buying art for someone else, which is the same argument we make in our roundup of gifts people actually keep.
Why the stained glass format is the right pick
It is worth understanding why this particular collection outperforms generic diamond art, because it explains why the picks above hold up. A diamond painting is built from thousands of small facets in discrete colour blocks. Stained glass artwork is built from bounded panels of flat colour separated by lead lines. The medium and the subject are doing the same job.
The practical result is that these designs finish sharper than a photographic subject would. Photo-realistic diamond art has to approximate gradients with facets, and up close it reads as noise. Panelled artwork has no gradients to approximate, so the finished canvas looks intentional at every viewing distance.
It also makes the sorting easier while you work. Flat panels mean fewer near-identical colour codes to distinguish under lamp light, which is the single most common source of misplaced drills.
Every design in this collection carries the same note: it is available exclusively at Paint With Diamonds as a full-drill kit, with copyright retained by artist Caleb Smith. Exclusivity is not usually a reason to buy, but in a category flooded with the same licensed images it does mean you are not buying something you will see under five other brand names.
Two things to settle before you order
First, round or square. Square diamonds sit flush with no gaps and hold hard edges, which suits leaded-glass artwork. Round diamonds place faster and catch light in the gaps. Every kit in this collection offers both, and you cannot mix them on one canvas.
Second, shipping origin. Kits shipping from the USA are quoted at 2-5 business days; kits shipping from China are quoted at 12-30 business days, with possible customs fees and duties for EU customers. The brand states timeframes are not guaranteed. Check which applies to the design you want, especially if it is a gift.
The brand also runs a recurring Buy 2, Get 1 Free promotion, which changes the maths if you are choosing between two designs. Compare the full stained glass collection at Paint With Diamonds before you commit to one.
The shortlist, in one place
- Best overall: Colorful Stained Glass Garden Owl.
- Best first kit: Stained Glass Lavender Fox, for a single subject and a restricted palette.
- Best fantasy: Stained Glass Dragon And Fairy.
- Most detailed: Stained Glass Rose Dragon Golden Stars.
- Highest contrast: Stained Glass Black Cat.
- Best florals: Stained Glass Kyoto Crane Garden.
- Best marine: Stained Glass Sea Turtle Sunburst.
- Best gift with meaning: Stained Glass Angel Of Lilies.
Whichever you pick, the spec is the same across the range: a full-drill Diamond Painting Kit in your choice of Round or Square diamonds, exclusive to the brand, with artwork by Caleb Smith. That consistency is what lets you shop purely on the picture.
One last framing. A diamond painting is a long, quiet, screen-free project, which puts it in the same bracket as the brands in our self-care and wellness gift roundup rather than in the quick-craft category. Buy the design you want to spend weeks with, not the one that looks most impressive in a thumbnail.