lf you’ve been following blogs about planning or looking up spread ideas on Instagram, you’ve probably seen the Zebra Mildliner highlighters. Those iconic highlighters that come in a wide array of colors you typically can’t find offered by other brands… So are these highlighters worth the cost?

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What colors do the Mildliners come in?

One of the key points of difference between the Mildliners and other highlighter brands are all of the color options!

The Zebra Mildliners are available in multiple sets, each with different colors:

• Set of 10 colors (animal colors)
• Set of 25 colors (note: these are also available in 5 separate packs of 5 highlighters)
• Set of 35 colors

You can also find them individually in some stationery stores – especially in Japan!

Read more: Favorite Stationery Shops in Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka)

Back when I purchased them a few years ago the set of 35 colors wasn’t available for shipping to Australia so I settled for the 25 pack instead. If I didn’t already have that pack, I’d get the 35 colors. So many shades to choose from!

You’ll notice in the image above that the Mildliners come in a broad range of:

• Pastels
• Brighs
• ‘Muted’ shades
• Colors you can’t normally find in a highlighter like red and brown
• Multiple shades of blue, purple etc.
• Gold (not just a yellow in the pack like other highlighter brands)

I also really love the green. It’s not a neon green and that’s hard to find in a highlighter.

Related post: 7 Highlighter brands that aren’t neon colors

Green themed spread in the Plum Paper Vertical Priorities Weekly planner

Some of the spreads where I’ve used the Mildliners

I love this color combination – one of my all time favorites!

Read more: 10 Bullet Journal Daily Scheduling Layout Ideas

There are so many Mildliner colors to choose from that you can create many color combinations..

Especially traditional rainbow color themes which is hard to do since most highlighter brands don’t come in red.

Rainbow weekly spread using the Speedy Stencils and Zebra Mildliners

Whistle and Birch Rainbow Weekly Spread using the Zebra Mildliners

Ghosting and bleed through

I did swatches for all of my Mildliners in the Scrivwell notebook (120 GSM paper).

Here is the back side of the pages. There is some minor ghosting for the lighter shades and deep ghosting for the darker shades.

 

By comparison, here are the results when I swatch them in a 160GSM notebook (the SEQES notebook). This is why spending the extra money for thicker paper is worth it!

No ghosting or bleed through on 160gsm paper!

How long does the ink last?

I purchased my Mildliners back in 2018 (so 6 years ago). They’re still working just as well as the day I bought them – hopefully that continues for a few more years!

How big is the chisel tip?

3mm. The SEQES notebook that I did these swatches in has a 5mm dot grid and you can see that the chisel tip does not fill the entire 5mm.

If you want a 5mm chisel tip I recommend the Stabilo Boss or the Staedtler Textsurfer.

Related post: Highlighter swatches and thickness comparison (38 brands compared)

How big is the marker end of the highlighter?

The other tip that you could use for writing headings or underlining, is approximately 1.5mm. I say approximately because the more you use them, the more the tip will ‘blunt’ and become wider.

I used the Muji 0.5 gel pen for the above swatches and gave the ink about 2 minutes to dry, then there was no smearing. If I didn’t wait the 2 minutes, there was only a little bit of smearing.

Read more: Pens & Highlighters Smear Testing: Which ones don’t smear 

Price Tag

These highlighters are readily available on Amazon and various stationery shops online. The individual highlighters are usually about $2.50 AUD (which converts to $1.65 USD / £1.30). The price per highlighter is about the same if you purchase a set of 5. However, the price goes down to about $1 AUD if you buy the set of 35.

Just note – there are double ups so if you buy one of the 5 packs, those same colors will appear again in the 25 pack (and the 35 pack). So if you want the broad range of colors, just buy the big pack and be done with it!

In Japan, the cheapest place for the Mildliners was Don Quijote (basically a cheap shop) where they were on 100 yen! (approx $1 AUD per highlighter).

The cost of the Mildliners is actually quite reasonable in my opinion. Remember that the highlighters are dual tip so it’s basically 2 highlighters for the price of 1.

For comparison, Stabilo and Staedlter (which are also really good highlighter brands – are about $2.50 AUD per highlighter in a pack and $3 – $4 AUD individually).

Alternatives

Some Mildliner dupes have been created over the years, but the cost of some of these can actually be comparable to the Midliners. Some of the dupe brands have more neon colors versus the Midliners muted tones.

If you want to see some dupes, take a look at this post: 4 Similar (and cheaper) alternatives to the Zebra Mildliner Dual Tip Highlighters

Here are some more I recently found on Amazon:

• Shuttle Art (set of 18) – I’m keen to try these! The rainbow colors look like the perfect shade (not too neon and not too bright)
• Outus (set of 25)
• Zosxi (set of 25)

Shuttle Art dual tip highlighters

Are the Zebra Mildliners worth the hype?

It’s a yes from me! I like having options when I’m making spreads – I often color coordinate and do different rainbow themes. There is a great variety of ‘muted’ tones instead of just neon colors which some highlighters have. Yes there are sets of pastel highlighters like the Stabilo Boss and Staedtler, but these generally only come in a set of 6.

I always like how my spreads turn out when I use the Zebra Mildliners, and also appreciate that they come in hard to find colors.

These are great highlighters for color coding and creating decorative, colorful planner spreads. And don’t forget they’re also dual tip!

Mildliner brush pens

If you like the Zebra Mildliner highlighters, you might also like the brush pens which come in the same colors so you can coordinate your entire planner 🙂

• Sets of 5 on Amazon (fluorescent, refined, refresh and noble colors)
• Set of 15 on Amazon

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