How to Paint Cloth and Robes on Warhammer 40,000 Miniatures

October 16, 2026

Robes, cloaks, tabards, scarves and battle standards give a 40k model movement and drama, and they are often the largest single area of colour on a character. Cloth is painted differently from hard armour: instead of crisp edge highlights, the aim is to show soft folds catching light. Once you understand where the light sits on a fold, every robe on the table becomes easier.

The short answer: basecoat the cloth, shade the recesses of every fold with a wash or darker glaze, then build two or three highlights up the ridges of the folds, each one narrower than the last, blending the steps with glazes. Use rough stippling and cross-hatching for coarse wool, sharp high-contrast transitions for silk, and deep shadows with almost no highlight for velvet, then seal with matt varnish.

How is painting cloth different from painting armour?

Armour has hard edges that take a thin, bright line; cloth has rounded ridges that catch a broad, soft band of light. That means you highlight the top surface of each fold rather than its edge, and blend the transitions so they look like gradual curves. Our guide to edge highlighting covers the armour approach for comparison.

How do you shade cloth folds?

After basecoating, apply a wash only into the deep recesses between folds, or use a darker version of the base thinned into a glaze for more control. Gravity matters: the underside of each fold and the area where cloth tucks into a belt are darkest. On light colours, a recess shade of a darker tone of the same colour looks cleaner than an all-over brown or black wash.

Where do highlights go on robes and cloaks?

Highlights go along the upper ridges of each fold, strongest where they face your main light source, normally above the model. Build each layer as a narrower band along the crest, then glaze the base colour back over the transitions to smooth them; the layering and glazing guides go into detail. For large flowing cloaks, wet blending gives the smoothest gradients.

How do you paint different types of fabric?

Texture and contrast are what make fabrics look different, so change the technique rather than just the colour.

Fabric	Technique	Contrast	Finish
Coarse wool or sackcloth	Stippled base, fine cross-hatched highlights	Low to medium	Matt
Linen and cotton robes	Smooth layers and glazes	Medium	Matt
Silk or fine sashes	Dark shadows beside sharp bright highlights	High	Matt, gloss on brightest points only
Velvet	Saturated base, very deep shadows, soft stippled light	Shadow-heavy	Ultra-matt
Thin or sheer veils	Heavily thinned glazes over the finished body beneath	Low	Matt

How do you paint white or black cloth?

White cloth looks best started from a light grey or bone, shaded with a thin grey-brown, and highlighted up to pure white only on the very top ridges. Black cloth should never be pure black at the base; use an off-black and highlight with a dark grey tinted slightly blue or brown so it stays rich. The same principles appear in our white armour and black armour guides.

How do you weather hems and dirty robes?

Robes trail through mud, so stipple a dark earthy brown up the bottom 2–4mm of the hem and fade it out with a lighter dust colour above. Frayed edges can be suggested with tiny vertical strokes of the base colour breaking the hem line. Our guides to mud and dirt and pigments show how to keep it realistic.

How do you paint simple patterns on cloth?

Start with stripes, chequers or a contrasting trim along the edge, since they follow the fold easily. Paint the pattern after the base and shading, keep lines thin and let them bend with the fabric, then shade over them with a thin glaze so they sit into the folds. For chequers, paint a grid of lines first, then fill alternate squares.

What are the most common cloth painting mistakes?

Painting thin edge highlights on folds, using too few highlight steps on large cloaks and shading with a wash that stains light colours are the usual culprits. Keep highlights broad and soft, step up gradually, and fix chalky transitions with glazes; our guide to fixing painting mistakes has more.

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