MAYIN Guides

Hand Painted Saree Guide: How It Is Made, How to Tell and How to Wear

By Nishita Nathani20 min read

Frangipani beige and brown floral hand painted chiffon saree by MAYIN

A hand painted saree is a woven saree whose design is painted on afterwards by hand, usually with a brush, one motif at a time, instead of being printed, stitched or woven in. Because each motif is painted by hand, repeats vary slightly, and because painted colour usually sits on the surface of the cloth, it needs gentle care: in practice, dry cleaning, whatever the fabric. This guide covers how they are made, motifs, telling hand painted from printed, Kalamkari and other painted traditions, chiffon versus mul cotton, styling, care and price. MAYIN's own designer hand painted sarees are a small floral range in chiffon and mul cotton, and you will meet all of them along the way.

At a glance
₹2,499 to ₹3,499MAYIN hand painted sarees, mul cotton to chiffon
2 fabricsChiffon for evenings, mul cotton for daytime
5.5 mSaree length, 45 inches wide; any blouse piece is extra
Dry cleanEvery hand painted saree, whatever the fabric
In this guide

What Makes a Saree Hand Painted

A hand painted saree starts life as a finished length of woven cloth. The design comes later, painted on by hand, usually with a brush. That separates it from three close cousins: a printed saree, where blocks, screens or a digital printer lay down the same design again and again; an embroidered saree, where the pattern is stitched in thread; and a woven design such as jamdani or a zari stripe, where the motif is built into the cloth on the loom.

You will see the word spelt two ways. Handpainted and hand painted mean exactly the same thing; sellers and search engines use both, and neither spelling tells you anything about quality. What matters is whether the design was really painted by hand, and the section on telling hand painted from printed shows you what to look for.

Paint and dye also behave differently on cloth. Dye soaks into the fibre and becomes part of it. Paint is a pigment carried in a binder: pigments have no natural hold on fibre, so the binder is what fixes the colour onto the surface. That is why painted colour can sit very slightly raised, and why it asks for gentler handling than a dyed ground.

MAYIN's hand painted range is small and every piece in it is floral. This guide features five: two chiffon sarees, Damask Rose in pink and Frangipani in beige and brown, each with a 1 m crepe blouse piece, and three mul cotton sarees with no blouse piece, Apricot Bloom in beige and brown and Anthuria in green and in orange.

How a Hand Painted Saree Is Usually Made

Every studio has its own habits, so read this as the common sequence rather than a fixed recipe. It also explains why painted sarees take longer to make than printed ones: each step happens by hand, and the colour has to dry between stages.

The usual sequence
1
Prepare the clothThe fabric is usually washed first to remove sizing, the starch left from weaving, so the colour can grip evenly. It is then dried and pressed flat.
2
Hold it tautThe saree is stretched on a frame or pinned over a padded table, so the cloth does not shift or pucker under the brush. Fine, sheer fabrics need this most.
3
Draw the outlineThe design is drawn freehand or traced from a paper pattern, often in a light line that the paint will later cover.
4
Fill the colourThe painter fills the outline colour by colour, adding shading, highlights and fine details such as veins on a leaf or edges on a petal.
5
Let it dryEach layer is left to dry fully before the next goes on, otherwise colours bleed into each other.
6
Fix the colourMost fabric paints are set with heat, usually by pressing from the reverse, so they bond with the cloth. Traditional dye crafts use mordants and repeated washing instead.
7
Check and finishThe saree is checked against the design, touched up where needed and cleaned of any guide marks.

The colour itself varies between makers: ready made fabric paints are the norm for contemporary painted sarees, while natural dyes belong to older crafts such as Kalamkari. Labels such as natural colours are used loosely, so if the type of colour matters to you, ask before you buy. The base fabric matters too: sheer chiffon has to be held very still, while soft, absorbent mul cotton takes colour readily, and its painted areas can feel a little different from the plain ground.

Motifs and Where the Painting Sits

Florals are the motif you will see most often on hand painted sarees, because a brush is good at what flowers need: shading from the centre of a petal to its edge, soft overlaps and leaves that curl. Traditional painted textiles draw on a wider vocabulary, and you will see these families again and again.

Motif families
FloralsRoses, lotus, frangipani and wild sprays; the most familiar painted motif.
Birds and animalsPeacocks, parrots and elephants, familiar from folk painting across Rajasthan, Gujarat and Bengal.
Trees and creepersA tree of life on the pallu, or a vine that runs along the border.
Geometric bordersBands, checks and repeating shapes that frame the painting.
Stories and deitiesScenes from the epics and temple themes, central to Kalamkari, Pattachitra and Kerala mural work.
Loose washesContemporary painters also use soft watercolour style washes with very little outline.

Placement matters as much as the motif. Many painted sarees concentrate the work on the pallu and the border, with lighter sprays across the body, so the design shows when you drape and the pleats stay soft. When you shop, look at where the painting falls on the pallu and the pleats, not just at the close up.

The colours in this guide
Colours in the MAYIN hand painted range
Pink: Damask Rose
Beige: Frangipani
Brown: Frangipani
Beige: Apricot Bloom
Green: Anthuria
Orange: Anthuria

All five MAYIN sarees in this guide are florals: the chiffons lean towards evenings, the mul cottons towards daytime. The floral saree guide covers print scale, ground colour and blouses across printed, painted, embroidered and woven florals.

Hand Painted or Printed: How to Tell

Digital printing can now imitate brushwork convincingly, and some listings call a printed saree painted. No single sign proves a saree is hand painted, but several together make a strong case. Look in good daylight, close up, and compare two or three repeats of the same motif.

Signs of hand painting
Brushstrokes: you can see the direction of the strokes inside petals and leaves, with slightly heavier colour where a stroke starts or ends.
Repeats that differ: the same flower painted twice varies a little in size, angle or shading. A perfect match across every repeat points to a print.
Colour on the surface: paint usually sits on top of the weave and can look a touch raised or glossier than the plain ground. A print usually looks flat, as if it is part of the cloth.
Living outlines: a painted outline thickens and thins with the hand. A printed one is even, and a digital print seen under a magnifier often breaks into fine dots.
Small overlaps: where one colour meets another you may see a slight overlap or a hairline gap that changes from motif to motif rather than repeating.
The reverse: on a fine fabric, paint often shows through paler or patchy; on a thicker fabric it may barely show. Treat this as a clue, not proof.

Do not test a saree you own by scratching, rubbing, wetting or burning a corner. You risk damaging the paint, and none of those tests is reliable on a finished saree. Online, zoom into the close up photographs instead.

Side by side
Hand paintedPrinted
Up closeBrushstrokes, soft and varied edgesEven edges; digital prints may show fine dots
RepeatsEach motif a little differentIdentical
ColourUsually sits on the surface, sometimes slightly raisedUsually looks flat and even
MadeOne saree at a timeMany metres in one run
CareDry clean, no rubbing, no iron on the paintDepends on the fabric; follow the label

It also helps to know how painting compares with the other ways a design gets onto a saree.

Four ways to put a design on a saree
TechniqueHow the design gets thereWhat you notice
Hand embroideredStitched in thread by hand, as on Vintage Wine, where hand embroidery sits over a printed floral on chiffonRaised texture you can feel; stitches show on the reverse
Hand paintedPainted on by hand after weaving, as on Damask Rose and Apricot BloomSmall variations from motif to motif; brushwork you can often see up close
Hand block printedCarved blocks pressed by hand, as on the white polka dot Moonlit PearlRepeats with tiny shifts where one block meets the next
PrintedScreen or digital printing; Elysia, a pink floral on pure chiffon, is a printed exampleSharp, identical repeats

For more on each, read the embroidered saree guide, the hand block print saree guide and the printed saree guide.

Kalamkari, Pattachitra and Kerala Mural

Three Indian traditions come up again and again in searches for painted sarees. MAYIN does not make any of them; they are here so you can recognise them and understand what the labels mean.

Painted traditions, for context
TraditionWhere and howGood to know
KalamkariAndhra Pradesh. Kalam means pen. In the Srikalahasti style the design is drawn freehand with a bamboo or tamarind pen, often with scenes from the epics and temple themes. Colour comes from natural dyes such as indigo and madder, fixed with mordants over many stages of treating, dyeing and washing.The Machilipatnam style uses carved wooden blocks for much of the design, so a Kalamkari label does not always mean hand painted. Both styles hold GI status.
PattachitraOdisha, especially Raghurajpur village near Puri, named Odisha’s first heritage village in 2000. The cloth is coated with chalk and gum, then painted with themes of Jagannath, Balabhadra, Subhadra and Krishna.It began as painting on cloth; painters later took it onto sarees, and Pattachitra sarees are still worn today, sometimes at formal events.
Kerala muralBased on Kerala’s temple murals, painted roughly from the 9th to the 18th century, with a five colour palette called panchavarna (red, yellow, green, black and white), bold outlines and figures of deities such as Krishna.Today these figures are painted onto kasavu sarees, partly because weaving cannot render faces well. Some low priced mural sarees may be printed, so use the signs above.

You will also see folk styles such as Madhubani from Bihar and Gond from central India on sarees, and the same signs help you tell hand painting from print. What these crafts share with a contemporary painted floral is the hand; what differs is the colour, the subject and the time involved. For Kerala looks during the harvest festival, see our Onam saree guide.

Chiffon or Mul Cotton

The base fabric decides how a painted saree feels, where you can wear it and how the painting reads. On chiffon, the ground is sheer, so light passes around the motifs and the painting tends to look soft and floaty. On mul cotton, the ground is opaque and matte, so the painting tends to read clearer and a little more graphic.

Choosing the base
Hand painted chiffonHand painted mul cotton
FeelFine, sheer and fluid; it floats as you moveSoft, light and breathable, with a relaxed matte fall
Best forEvenings, receptions, farewells and partiesDay functions, office celebrations, brunch and summer
Blouse piece1 m crepe blouse pieceNone; choose a cotton blouse
MAYIN price₹3,499₹2,499
UnderneathAlways a petticoat, matched to the saree or nudeA petticoat in a matching tone
CareDry cleanDry clean
In this guideDamask Rose, FrangipaniApricot Bloom, Anthuria in green and orange

Both fabrics sit together in the designer hand painted sarees collection. Pick chiffon for movement and an evening feel. Mul cotton is the easier companion in heat, and in most of North India it is the comfortable choice from spring to the end of the monsoon. Note that a hand painted mul cotton saree still needs dry cleaning, unlike a plain mul cotton you would hand wash. To understand the fabrics themselves, read what is a chiffon saree and what is a mul cotton saree. Every MAYIN saree is 5.5 m long and 45 inches wide, and no fall or pico is done.

How to Wear a Hand Painted Saree

The painting is the statement, so everything else should support it. Choose a solid blouse in the ground colour or in one colour lifted from the flowers, keep jewellery to one focal piece and drape so the painted pallu shows. A printed blouse competes with the painting.

Blouse and metal by saree
SareeEasy blouseDeeper blouseMetal
Damask RosePink, ivoryMaroonGold, pearl
FrangipaniBeige, ivoryBrown, blackGold, antique gold
Apricot BloomIvory, beigeBrownGold, pearl
Anthuria, greenGreen, whiteBottle greenSilver, oxidised silver
Anthuria, orangeOrange, ivoryRustGold, antique gold

The two chiffon sarees come with a 1 m crepe blouse piece. A 1 m blouse piece covers most short and elbow sleeve designs; full sleeves often need more unless you are a smaller size, so show your tailor the piece first. The mul cotton sarees have no blouse piece, so a cotton blouse in one of the colours above works well. For cuts and necklines, see chiffon saree blouse designs and blouse ideas by colour.

For jewellery, our jewellery guide suggests one small piece with painted and embroidered sarees: studs, small drops or small jhumkas, so the work stays the focal point. Pearls suit the soft pink and beige grounds; long necklaces can rub a painted pallu and catch on chiffon.

To drape, fold five to seven pleats, slip one pin through the pleats only, from the inside, to hold them together, then tuck them in at the navel, facing left. Many people leave a painted chiffon pallu open so the flowers show; pin it at the shoulder through a few gathered folds where the ground is plain, never through the paint, and add a small pin at the back for a long evening. More in how to pin a saree. Under sheer chiffon, always wear a petticoat matched to the saree, or nude if you have no match; shapewear on its own shows through, so if you want shaping, wear it under the petticoat. Our guide to what to wear under a saree covers the rest. Do your hair and any hairspray first, then drape, so nothing sprays onto the paint.

Where to Wear One

Hand painted sarees by occasion
OccasionChooseWhy it works
Cocktail or evening partyDamask RosePink chiffon with a maroon blouse and gold drop earrings reads dressed up without sequins. More in the cocktail saree guide.
Reception or wedding, as a guestFrangipani or Damask RoseSoft chiffon with painted florals feels special next to heavier wedding wear, and it is light enough for a long evening.
FarewellEither chiffonSoft colours and painted florals photograph well; see the farewell saree guide.
MehendiAnthuria in greenGreen is a natural mehendi colour, and breathable mul cotton copes with a long afternoon.
Day functions and office celebrationsApricot Bloom or Anthuria in orangeMul cotton keeps you cool, and a painted floral feels a step up from everyday wear.
A giftAny of the fiveHand painting feels personal. Add a note that it needs dry cleaning; more ideas in the saree gift guide.
Five complete looks
Evening reception
SareeDamask Rose, pink chiffon
BlouseMaroon, elbow sleeves
JewelleryGold drops
FootwearGold sandals
Farewell
SareeFrangipani, beige chiffon
BlouseBlack, sleeveless
JewelleryPearl studs
FootwearNude block heels
Mehendi
SareeAnthuria, green mul cotton
BlouseWhite cotton
JewelleryOxidised silver jhumkas
FinishMarigold flowers in the hair
Office celebration
SareeAnthuria, orange mul cotton
BlouseIvory, three quarter sleeves
JewelleryAntique gold studs
FootwearTan flats
Daytime family function
SareeApricot Bloom, beige mul cotton
BlouseBrown cotton
JewellerySmall gold jhumkas
FootwearTan kolhapuris

Wear your footwear while you drape and set the hem from just grazing the floor to just above it; the footwear guide goes into the detail.

Care and Storage

Every hand painted saree, chiffon or mul cotton, should be dry cleaned. Painted colour usually sits on the surface of the cloth, so rubbing, soaking and harsh stain removers are what wear it down. When you hand it over, tell the dry cleaner the saree is hand painted and point out the painted areas, so they are treated gently.

Caring for hand painted sarees
Do
✓Dry clean, and say the saree is hand painted.
✓Blot a fresh spill with a clean, dry cloth and take it to the cleaner soon.
✓Press from the reverse on low heat, through a cotton cloth.
✓For chiffon, press dry on the lowest heat through a cloth and skip steam.
✓Air the saree in shade for a while after wearing, before you fold it.
✓Put on perfume, deodorant and hairspray before you drape and let them dry.
Don't
✕Rub a stain or put stain remover on paint.
✕Put an iron directly on the painted surface.
✕Soak it or wash it at home.
✕Pin through the paint.
✕Dry or hang it in strong sun.
✕Store it in plastic.
Storing a painted saree
Fold so the main painted areas stay off the fold lines where you can.
Wrap the saree in muslin or a soft cotton cloth that lets it breathe.
Refold along different lines every few months, so no crease sets into the paint.
Keep it away from damp, direct sun and heat, which can dull or stiffen paint over time.
Do not hang chiffon on a metal hanger for long; fold it instead.

Full instructions for each fabric are in how to wash and store cotton, chiffon and linen sarees.

Why Hand Painted Sarees Cost More

A printed design can be run across many metres in one go. A painted one is made one saree at a time, with drying time between colours and a fixing step at the end. That time, and the skill of the painter, is most of what you pay for.

What MAYIN hand painted sarees cost
₹2,499
MAYIN hand painted mul cottonApricot Bloom and Anthuria: florals on soft, everyday mul cotton.
₹3,499
MAYIN hand painted chiffonDamask Rose and Frangipani, each with a 1 m crepe blouse piece.

Outside MAYIN, prices vary widely with the base fabric, the painter, how much of the saree is painted and whether it is made to order; designer pieces and folk art on handwoven bases can cost many times more.

What you are paying for
TimeOutlining, filling, drying and fixing all happen by hand, one saree at a time.
SkillShading a petal evenly on a sheer, moving fabric takes a practised hand.
CoverageA painted pallu usually costs less than painting that runs across the whole saree.
Base fabricA handwoven or fine base costs more before a brush touches it.
Small batchesPainters make far fewer pieces than a printing line, so costs are shared across fewer sarees.

Price alone proves nothing: a high price does not guarantee hand painting, and a modest one does not mean a print. At MAYIN, shipping across India is free on orders of ₹1,999 and above, so every saree here qualifies; we also ship internationally, cash on delivery is available, and you can return or exchange within 7 days.

Hand Painted Sarees in This Guide

The hand painted range is small, so the grid below also includes hand embroidered chiffons and an embroidered mul cotton that sit well beside it.

Shop hand painted and designer sarees

See the full designer hand painted sarees collection, or browse designer sarees, hand embroidered chiffon sarees, floral chiffon sarees, floral sarees and chiffon sarees. For more reading, try the designer saree guide and, if you prefer a printed floral such as Juliet, the floral saree guide.

Questions People Ask

What is a hand painted saree?

A woven saree whose design is painted on by hand, usually with a brush, after weaving, rather than printed, embroidered or woven in.

Is it handpainted or hand painted?

Both spellings are used and mean the same thing. Neither tells you anything about quality; what matters is whether the design was really painted by hand.

How can I tell if a saree is hand painted or printed?

Look for brushstrokes, outlines that thicken and thin, small differences between repeated motifs and colour that usually sits on the surface. Identical repeats or fine dots under a magnifier point to a print.

How is a hand painted saree made?

Usually the cloth is washed and stretched, the outline is drawn, colour is filled in by brush and left to dry, and the paint is then fixed, most often with heat. Methods vary from studio to studio.

Which paint is used, and is it natural colour?

It varies by maker. Most contemporary painted sarees use fabric paints fixed with heat, while natural dyes belong to crafts such as Kalamkari, so ask the seller if the type of colour matters to you.

Can I wash a hand painted saree at home?

No. Dry clean every hand painted saree, chiffon or mul cotton, and tell the dry cleaner it is hand painted so the painted areas are handled gently.

Can I iron a hand painted saree?

Yes, from the reverse on low heat through a cotton cloth, and never directly on the paint. For chiffon, use the lowest heat and skip steam.

Will the paint fade or crack?

Well fixed paint usually holds up to careful dry cleaning. Rubbing, harsh stain removers, strong sun and heat on the surface can make it fade, and folding along the same lines can crack it, so refold along different lines every few months.

Why are hand painted sarees expensive?

Each saree is painted by hand, one at a time, with drying time between colours and a fixing step at the end.

Is Kalamkari hand painted or printed?

Both exist. The Srikalahasti style is drawn freehand with a pen, while the Machilipatnam style uses carved wooden blocks for much of the design.

Can I wear a hand painted saree to a wedding?

Yes. A hand painted chiffon such as Damask Rose or Frangipani suits a reception, a day wedding or an evening function, and painted mul cotton suits mehendi and daytime functions.

Why does my saree look slightly different from the photo?

Each motif is painted by hand, so small differences in shade, size and placement are part of the craft. Screens and lighting can also shift colour a little.

Keep reading

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