Turquoise or Royal Blue ink for a letter?

[JO01]

I quite enjoy writing letters, even though my handwriting isn't great and over the last few months, I've written a handful of very respectful fan letters to both major and minor celebrities, specific to the person and including some photographs for autographs.  It's just something I thought of trying one day and the actual process of finding a correspondence address and sorting photographs is all part of the challenge.  I don't really care if I get anything back, it's just an enjoyable pastime.

 

I've always used royal blue ink, and I tend to use ink made by the pen supplier.  I've got both MB and Pelikan royal blue.

 

I'm now looking at Pelikan 4001 turquoise ink, possibly to use as a letter writing ink.

 

This may be an impossible and rhetorical question, but is turquoise likely to be taken a bit less seriously than a royal blue?  Perhaps a bit frivolous?   Should I stick with the traditional blue?

 

What do you think?

 

Thanks.

[PAKMAN]

I'm a fan of using many colors of ink, but I do think that Royal Blue would be taken more seriously. 

[jthole]

In letters to friends, I use a different ink color for each new paragraph, but that's not what you are looking for.

 

Turquoise will stand out more than royal blue, so that would be my choice (unless it's a formal letter). Have you considered dark green as well?

[Runnin_Ute]

In a letter I finished today to a pen pal, I used two, maybe three inks. KWZI El Dorado, a golden color and Edelstein Apricot Achat, the 2025 Ink of the Year.  Seems like I briefly used something else too, but I am drawing a blank right now on what it was. The letter was a little over two A5 pages total. 

 

If I were doing something similar, I might use turquoise. Especially if the recepient was someone in the arts.

[SamCapote]

For older folks, there may be fond memories of Peacock Blue.  I say go for it.  The letter will be more memorable than the typical royal blue.

[Mercian]

@JO01:
FWIW, when Montblanc sold an 'Ink of Friendship', it was a turquoise ink.

IIRC, in the Victorian era, brown was the preferred colour of ink for writing to friends.

My only 'hard' recommendation is that you choose an ink that looks nice (and is easy to read) on whatever paper you are writing on.

 

If you want to go very 'traditional' you could get some light-blue writing paper and write on it in a blue-black ink.
Or maybe use a sepia-coloured ink on ivory paper.

 

Personally, when writing to friends I like to use dark brown or murky-green ink on paper that is white or cream, or sepia ink on ivory paper. Or R&K 'Scabiosa' on either of those.

If I were writing to a celebrity, I think that I would go with an iron-gall blue-black on the pale-blue paper.
It's easy to read, and is slightly more 'formal'-looking (which seems appropriate for writing to someone I've never met), but it is still a 'different'-enough colour to get noticed.
(Plus I love the shading!)

YMMV, but I find that it can be hard to read a full page of writing that has been done in a very brightly-coloured ink.

So I save my brightly-coloured inks (whether turquoise, bright red, or bright blue, or orange) for shorter messages - e.g. notes inside greetings cards.

I hope that this list of opinions/options is of some use to you - even if it only makes you certain that you actually prefer to use Royal Blue ink!
Slàinte,
M.

[Ted Nashe]

If I were you, I'd use royal blue for writing letters to male celebrities, and turquoise for letters to female ones. In my experience, girls seem to appreciate turquoise as a colour in general, blokes less so. Perhaps your chosen celebrity would be more likely to write a response if you tailored your choice of ink colour . 📝

[Penguincollector]

   I think @Ted Nashe is onto something regarding tailoring the ink to the letter recipient.

 

  There are sooo many shades of turquoise and teal, there’s bound to be one more suitable to an artist that does serious work, and one for those who might do lighter things, and something else yet again for a more flamboyant artist of any sort.  For the more serious, I might use something like Pilot Ku-Jaku, or Lamy Petrol (either one). For the lighthearted, Sheaffer’s Peacock Blue (my school day favorite) or Leonardo Turchese Hawaii; and for the flamboyant, Wearingeul Wayfarer or Diamine Vibe. I’m a big turquoise ink collector, there really is a shade for every writing situation, and every one will stand out- whether it’s a pale shading ink that leans grey, or a beautiful vibrant color that sheens red, or a tone on tone sparkling sea water hue.

[JO01]

On 11/19/2025 at 8:26 PM, Penguincollector said:

or a beautiful vibrant color that sheens red

That sounds lovely, which turquoise ink would give me that please?

 

On 11/15/2025 at 1:12 AM, Mercian said:

I hope that this list of opinions/options is of some use to you - even if it only makes you certain that you actually prefer to use Royal Blue ink!

It does. Thank you. 

[Penguincollector]

36 minutes ago, JO01 said:

That sounds lovely, which turquoise ink would give me that please?

   Try Diamine Vibe. It’s from last year’s Inkvent, available in 50 ml bottles. I absolutely love it.

 This is the light catching the sheen on Canopus paper written with a Sailor Hocoro Fude:

 

 

  This is the actual colour of the ink- same paper, Sheaffer Jr dipped, different lighting (the PB is a dot of Sheaffer Peacock Blue as the writing sample is a piece of a larger comparison of turquoise inks):

 

 

  I have a gallery file called “Inks” that has a good number of my turquoise ink cards if you want to see more turquoise inks:

 

Inks
 

 

[Minty]

Royal blue & turquoise are both good choices.  If you care to look a little further,  Schaffer purple ink in cartridges works well on white Clairefontaine paper.

 

Life is too bad to drink short wine. (Arlen)