Aesthetic Highlighter Marker Colors Under $1

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Get aesthetic highlighter marker colors for a fraction of the cost of other popular brands.

I have been on the search for neutral highlighters to use in my planner. A couple of my favorites are the Zebra Mildliners and the Tombow Dual Brush Pens, but they can get pricey. Then the other day I found the Crayola Colors of the World collection while browsing around Michaels. I’ve heard of this collection before and finally picked some up.

This post is a review of the Crayola Colors of the World line, which I bought to try as highlighter marker colors for my neutral planning aesthetic. Each marker costs less than a dollar!

An Inexpensive Alternative for Neutral Highlighter Marker Colors

Color Swatches

I did a color swatch of the 24 colors that come in the set. Some of the colors show up super dark, but I really loved some of the lighter, nude tones, like light almonds and light goldens.

At the bottom, I included a couple swatches of my favorite Mildliner and Tombow pens for comparison.

Bleed Through and Smearing

An important consideration when choosing highlighter markers is the bleed through and smearing.

The bleed through for the Crayola COTW markers isn’t bad. It looks about the same as the Mildliners and Tombows. But you can see in the photo that a tiny spot bleeds through a little more at the start of the brush strokes.

I also tested smearing when highlighting text written with a black gel pen. It’s hard to tell in the photo, but the smearing is very minimal with the Crayola and Tombow markers. The Mildliner has the least smearing.

* Pro Tip: If your marker is smearing the ink of the text you’re highlighting, use the highlighter first, then write your text over it.

Highlighter Marker Cost and Comparison

Zebra Mildliners are my favorite highlighters, but they have limited neutral colors. I have the gray, dark gray and brown. They run about $4 each.

Tombow Dual Brush Pens have a much wider selection of neutral colors, but I find that they bleed and smear more. They run about $3 each.

The Crayola COTW markers are about $6 for a box of 24. It has a great selection of colors, and the bleed through and smearing is not too bad.

Final Verdict

I am really happy I found these markers. Out of the 24 colors, there are about 8 that I like best: extra light almond, very light almond, light almond, light medium almond, very light golden, light golden, light medium golden and medium deep golden.

These markers aren’t actual highlighters, of course, so the deep browns would probably be too dark. The deeper pinks would work well as highlighters, but they’re a little too pink for my taste. The 8 colors pictured above are perfect neutral shades and are light enough to work well as highlighters with little bleed through. And even if I only use these 8, all of them together still cost less than one Mildliner or Tombow!

I hope you found this post about inexpensive aesthetic highlighter marker colors helpful!