Reuse

Refilling Prismacolor markers

Can you refill or revive dry Prismacolors? Yeah! And it's pretty easy and affordable.

Erik Purins

Erik Purins

— 5 min read
Share
Me at my workshop, refilling Prismacolor alcohol markers. A squeeze bottle in my right hand. A marker with its fiber tip removed in my left. A rag protects the surface of a wooden workbench.
If this is science, count me in.

This is a consolidated Mastodon thread from Apr. 18, 2026

For a video format of this article, check out my PeerTube

Reviving dried out markers is easy

And cheaper than new markers.

Stop throwing your old Prismacolor markers away

I've been drawing with a couple of boxes of old Prismacolor alcohol markers that I was gifted, and never used. I love them now!

Their colors are so vibrant, they dry quickly, and it's easy to draw over them with colored pencils, fine liner, and acrylic paint markers (POSCA brand and other generic brands).

But I quickly grew frustrated: my favorite colors dried out after a couple months.

I developed a system to help me know which ones were faded out. The drier ones that made scratchy fills and were unreliable, I wrapped yellow electric tape around. The good ones that were very dark still, I wrapped blue painters tape around. I had a two pail system: one yogurt pail for the fresh markers (blue tape), one for the dry ones (yellow tape). The driest ones I threw away.

Then I went shopping at artSPOT in Edmunds (Seattle area) and picked up some new Copic brand markers, and some new POSCA pens. The clerk helpfully let me know that I could refill the Copic markers.

That got me thinking, can I refill or revive my dry Prismacolors?

It turns out, yeah!

And, it's pretty easy, and affordable.

Supplies

Here's the list of stuff you'll need.

If you're missing some supplies, it's cheap to pick them up from your local freecycle or buy nothing groups.

I've included some links to different stores as examples, as well as some Amazon affiliate links.

My workbench converted to marker refill station. There is a pair of linesman pliers, a squishy plastic bottle that holds 66ml of water, a yellow low lint rag, and a kitchen quality scale set to zero grams. A pile of different colored alcohol markers has been laid out, sorted by prismacolor identifier.
My workbench converted to marker refill station.

Getting started

The basic concept? Alcohol markers dry out of alcohol, before all the pigment is actually used up. We're going to dilute any existing pigment and alcohol, and recharge the marker by refilling it with new alcohol.

There was a great reddit thread that tipped me off to the exact alcohol blend inside of Copic brand markers. I took that formula, determined that it was 3 different alcohols in a blend, and looked at how I could reproduce that blend.

I went with a 2 alcohol combo, one of which I actually had in the house. We'll mix that up, and store it in a squirt bottle.

Then you'll just pull out the felted fabric marker tip with pliers from the wider side of the double ended marker. It pops out without much effort.

And squirt in the new sauce until the alcohol starts to run out, then replace the tip and cap.

How much alcohol to mix?

Weigh and test all your markers. When they're full and fresh out of the box, mine weigh 17 grams. Anything that's 15 grams or less draws dry and scratchy, I can see it on the paper. Try for yourself and see, and sort your markers into the pile you want to refill. When I did this sorting, I had just over 40 markers to refill.

While you're weighing, you can also take a scrap piece of paper or sketchbook page, and write out for yourself some samples of how the marker looks before the refill (the before swatch). Then, after refill, you can make an 'after' swatch and compare the color saturation and flood speed.

Figure out the total grams you'll need to mix up; we're going to make a 90/10 blend of ethanol/isopropyl alcohols, effectively denaturing the high end ethanol ourselves. I blended this by weight using a glass jar and my scale.

I'm not sure we need to do this step, since the ethanol is more friendly to the body than the rubbing alcohol. But it's close to the blend in the spec sheet, and it might influence how the marker draws out the pigment and dries. And it worked for me the first time.

I mixed enough of the ratio to fill my squeeze bottle, which was roughly 50ml by volume. The 16oz ethanol bottle I listed above is WAAY too much, I'll never run out for years of use, especially cutting it with a 16oz bottle of isopropyl I have already.

The dropper tip of the squeeze bottle I recommend is a thin metal tip, which is perfect for placing into the open marker. I was able to refill about 40 markers with a single fill of 50ml.

You can always mix more than you need, and store it. But it'll slowly mix with humidity in the air and become more water over time.

Make sure to seal your alcohol bottles up when you're done, so they stay mostly alcohol.

How long to wait until it works?

Stuff should work in a day, I gave it 2 days. I literally just took an old takeout soup container, stored the markers vertically in there, and then flipped them after a day.

If you test 24 hours later, you should see dramatic improvement. By day 2, both ends of the Prismacolor should work again, because they share the core compartment of pigment/alcohol.

It's possible one of the 'felt' tips dried out hard, and that the pigment shellac'd over and is hardened. But I've had my markers for over 12 years before I really used them, and even the worst of mine started working again.

Fun things to remember

  • Flat bottom glass is helpful to measure out alcohol on the scale.
  • Water conversion ml to grams is 1:1, alcohol demonstrably is not.
  • New Prismacolor markers measure 17 grams each.
  • A dead dry marker weighs 14g.
  • 15g marker works with a little dryness visible.
  • 16oz ethanol is way alcohol than I’ll ever need to refill 40 dry markers once
  • The TAP plastic squeeze bottle (box labeled hypo 49 from gaunt industries) is perfect for applying to either marker end.
  • I didn’t realize I had some old markers that actually end in a micron style barrel. I refilled those from the chisel tip side.
  • Can just fill any marker weighing less than 15g, with some confidence.

Read more