Art and Craft Supplies Singapore

4 August 2026 · 3 min read

Quick answer: for paint and brushes, Art Friend is the default. For volume and cheap consumables, Spotlight. For paper, packaging and everything odd, Daiso, Popular and the shophouses around Arab Street and Chinatown. Mustafa if it is late and you need something now.

Below is what each kind of shop is actually good for, so you make one trip rather than three.

Start by working out which shop you need

Most wasted trips come from treating “art supplies” as one category. It is at least four.

• Fine art materials — artist-grade paint, canvas, brushes, ink. Specialist shops only.
• Craft and volume — card, foam, glue, fabric, anything you need forty of. Craft superstores.
• Stationery and paper — pads, pens, notebooks, gift wrap. Bookshops and lifestyle stores.
• Cheap and cheerful — brushes for children, disposable palettes, table covering. Value chains.

Fine art materials

Art Friend is the main specialist chain and the default answer for paint, canvas and brushes. Range is deep — student and artist grade side by side, canvases in most sizes, and staff who can actually answer a question about a medium. Prices are not the lowest, and for materials where quality shows, that is usually the right trade.

Sin Hin Chuan Kee is the old-school alternative — a long-standing stationery and art supplier with a more utilitarian feel and keen prices, particularly on basics bought in quantity.

The art shops around Bras Basah are worth knowing about generally, since the area has been the city’s stationery and art quarter for decades.

Craft and volume

Spotlight covers fabric, yarn, craft materials and party supplies at scale. This is where to go when you need a lot of something rather than a good one — table covering, canvas panels in multipacks, cheap brush sets for a group.

Ikea belongs on this list for reasons that are not obvious: frames, storage, cheap textiles and a surprisingly usable range of children’s art materials.

Paper, stationery and gifts

Popular is the reliable neighbourhood option — paper, pads, basic paints, and there is one near almost everywhere.

Paper Market, The Paper Stone and Typo cover the more decorative end: patterned paper, cards, journals, gift wrap. Useful for scrapbooking and card-making, less so for painting.

Klosh and similar lifestyle shops are worth a look for finished craft-adjacent gifts rather than raw materials.

Cheap and cheerful

Daiso is the best-value stop in the country for anything disposable — brushes for children, palettes, sponges, storage tubs, table covering. Quality is exactly what you would expect, which for a one-off group session is often enough.

Mustafa Centre earns its place through hours and breadth rather than specialism. Open around the clock, and it has a bit of everything, which matters when you realise at eleven at night that you have no white paint.

The wholesale streets

Arab Street and the surrounding shophouses are the place for fabric, trimmings, beads and haberdashery — and considerably cheaper than retail if you are buying any quantity.

People’s Park Complex and the shops around Chinatown cover packaging, paper goods, ribbon and craft odds and ends, again at wholesale-adjacent prices.

Both reward a browse rather than a list. Neither is where to go if you need one specific tube of paint quickly.

What to buy first

If you are starting from nothing and want to paint, the list is short:

• A pre-stretched, primed canvas. 30x40cm is a comfortable first size.
• Acrylics, a basic set, plus a larger tube of white — white goes first, always.
• Three brushes: a wide flat, a medium round, a small round. Not a twelve-brush set.
• A palette and water pots. Paper plates and mugs work.
• Table protection, because dry acrylic does not come off wood.

Spend on the paint and the canvas. Save on everything else. What you actually need goes into the reasoning, and where to buy materials covers the shops in more depth.

What not to buy at all

If you are joining a session rather than painting at home, the answer is nothing. Canvas, paints, brushes, palette and apron are laid on, and there is nothing to bring or buy on the day — how a session runs covers what is included.

Worth knowing before a shopping trip, because the most common version of this is someone buying a full set of materials for one afternoon and never using them again.

Before you go

Retail moves quickly, and several shops that appear in older guides to this subject have since closed or moved. Check current opening hours and locations before making a trip across the island, particularly for anything in the older shophouse areas.