Diamine Midnight
Ink Review #120
*Please note that the scan is the accurate representation of this color.
Overview
The color/properties
Diamine Midnight is a deep blue with a cloudy purple sheen. It’s an interesting color to look at in large swatches/splats because the sheen is just dull enough to make it look like a purple ink instead of a blue one. This isn’t something that’s observable in writing, as the sheen comes through much stronger. With that said, it is a sheening ink, but it’s not a bright, high-contrast sheen like you would expect from some of the more notable sheeners.
There’s also the same smell I get from some Diamine inks. It’s not a pleasant smell, but it’s not so strong in this one, and I almost didn’t catch it until I had the bottle open to refill a pen.
Ink splat
Ink droplets
Performance on paper:
Midnight is well-behaved: there was some bleed-through on the Kokuyo sheet with the larger nib sizes, but there wasn’t any visible bleeding or feathering on any of the other test papers.
The dry times, however, weren’t great. With the fine nib sizes, the ink dries within 10-15 seconds reasonably enough to close a book on the ink without smudging, but the large nib sizes vary considerably and can easily take up to and over 30 seconds to dry. The high sheen and saturation also mean that this ink will be prone to smudging, even when it seems like it’s dry.
The water resistance is also not great: water exposure immediately causes the ink to cloud heavily. There’s some light shadows left behind of anything that was written, but the clouding is so messy and heavy that the legibility isn’t great.
Water resistance
Chromatography
Performance in the pen:
Midnight has a mostly consistent wet flow, but despite that, it wasn’t as slick as I expected it to be. It is still mostly comfortable, but if you have a more tactile nib you’ll still feel it easily through this ink. For being a sheening ink this ink performs well enough, however it still suffers from common pitfalls such as drying quickly in the nib if you lift off of the paper for too long. It was also noticeably drier in both the needlepoint and extra fine nibs. It still wrote fine but wasn’t as comfortable as the fine nib and larger.
The cleaning was okay — there weren’t any stains left in the pen, but there was a ring of residue left over inside the pen. I wasn’t able to get it out with basic flushing and letting the barrel soak with water overnight didn’t help. I was able to get out without disassembly by using a twisted paper towel, but the ability to do that will vary from pen to pen. I personally wouldn’t use this in any kind of demonstrator or light-colored pen that may be prone to staining.
Written on 52 GSM Tomoe River paper (white) with a Sailor broad nib
Written on 52 GSM Tomoe River paper (white) with a Sailor broad nib
Performance in a pen: 8/10
Performance on paper: 9/10
Color saturation: 9/10
Sheening: 7/10
Shading: 1/10
Dry time: 5/10
Water resistance: 1/10
Ease of cleaning: 8/10
Shimmer: None
Julian’s Thoughts…
I wasn’t thinking about it when I decided that this would be today’s ink review, but it does feel oddly appropriate for an impromptu New Year’s Eve special!
Midnight was a nice surprise – Sarah sent me this earlier this fall, but I hadn’t had much of a chance to look at it until now. She’d said a lot of great things about it but I still wasn’t sure what to expect. I love a lot of Diamine’s blues, so I was optimistic. I had a feeling it would be similar to Diamine’s Oxford Blue, filling the role of dark everyday blue-black. As it turns out it’s a very nice ink that suits its namesake, but I don’t think it’s the best fit for an everyday writer. It’s the smudging — it kills its usability for any writing that will be handled a lot. Work notes, schoolwork, elaborate planning. It’s not the best fit. That places it in the category of fun inks! And a fun ink it is, with just enough sheen to add a little flair to your writing. It’s an easy recommendation if you just want something a little fun, but not too eye-catching for your basic writing.
Sarah’s Thoughts…
I’ve been excited for this review for quite a while now because I have such a fond attachment to this particular ink. Diamine Midnight was the first bottle of ink that I ever bought when I fell into the fountain pen hobby. Julian gifted me my very first pen (a purple Pilot Metropolitan with a fine nib) for Christmas in 2020, and a month later, I ordered this ink. The only ink I’d tried before this was the Parker Quink black he sent with my pen. Truthfully, I didn’t love Midnight at first: it came out much darker than I’d hoped — more black than blue to my eyes. After a year of false starts with this ink, I finally obtained one of my grail pens: a Platinum 3776 with a three tined music nib. For some reason, the first ink I reached for out of my collection was my old bottle of Diamine Midnight, and I fell in love. The music nib showed this ink to its best advantage, spreading it out just enough to make the deep blue more visible without losing the darker/almost black shading. I was also surprised to see how easily it could sheen at times.
Since then, I’ve come to enjoy it in many other pens. It’s definitely an ink that comes with some caveats (as Julian has mentioned already) but nothing unworkable.
And with that, dear readers, we wish all of you a very safe and very Happy New Year! 🍾🥂🎆
Sample written in a 52 gsm Tomoe River notebook with a Sailor 1911 Promenade “Shining Blue” (broad nib)
More images/info:
Tools and materials used in the writing samples:
A TWSBI Diamond 580 AL with 7 nib units including a Needlepoint grind, EF, F, M, B, 1.1mm stub, and an Architect grind. All nibs are tuned to perform at the same medium wetness.
A Rhodia No16 A5 DotPad
A Leuchtturm1917 A5 Notebook
A Midori MD A5 Notebook
A 52gsm A5 Tomoe River Notebook
A Maruman Mnemosyne A5 Spiral Notebook
A Kokuyo Campus A5 Notebook