Best Highlighter Pens for Study, Work & Creative Use

October 2025

I LOVE highlighters!

To some this is an odd statement but, since 2016, I have had a favourite brand of highlighter that I used religiously through highschool and first year university. As I have started to use fountain pens more, my taste in highlighters have also expanded to options that I can use with my pens without smudging them.

Lots of the highlighters I have in my rotation are used both as highlighters and as markers for me. I own very few single-use art supplies and the items in this article are no different. While I will be talking about them as highlighters, I have also used many of them for hand-lettering, sketching, doodling, and coloring.

Traditional Highlighters

These highlighters are great for highlighting over waterproof pens or printed text but will smudge water-based ink found in most fountain pens or gel pens. If you do want to use these highlighters with a water-based pen I recommend underlining your text or highlighting and then writing overtop of the highlighted section. It generally works well but is not foolproof with some ink, paper and highlighter combinations.

Zebra Mildliners

These are the highlighters I started to use in high school. Nearly a decade on, I still love them and most haven't needed to be replaced because the lids seal incredibly well. Every few years Zebra launches some new colors and currently they are up to 41 colors, available in both packs and as open-stock individual pens. Mildliners are a very pale highlighter and though they do offer fluorescent colors. My favourite ones are their more muted tones like Beige, Dark Blue, Violet, Cyan, & Olive. The pens are dual tip and come in both a brush & bullet nib version and a chisel & bullet nib version.

Sharpie

Sharpie makes a huge variety of highlighters but for this article I decided to specifically look at the Pocket Highlighter Chisel Tips in Pastel. These highlighters have something called SMEAR GUARD® and I really wanted to see if they actually held up against fountain pens. Compared to most other highlighters, they do. With most colours there was very little to no streaking and with dark colours there was a tiny bit. The only inks they really did not work over were inks that sparkle or sheen.

Highlighter Fountain Pens & Ink

Kaweco and Pelikan both technically make a highlighter pen though currently I prefer the Kaweco Ice Sport Glow Marker to the Pelikan M205 DUO Highlighter purely because of the nib each pen comes with. The inks these pens use are still water-based so much like the option above you are better to highlight then write or underline with them if combining them with “traditional” fountain pens.

Pelikan Classic M205 Duo Highlighter Neon Yellow

This pen is one of those fountain pens that I feel makes a statement whenever someone pulls it out. Pelikan has released and re-released this pen a few times over the years since its original release in 2010 as an addition to the Classic M205 Line. Currently on the market in Neon Yellow, Pelikan has done a few colour variations over the years including 2013’s Shiny Green variation. The one real downside of this pen is the nib. Most highlighters on the market have a large chisel nib making it possible to highlight entire words in a single swipe but Pelikan put a Double Broad (BB) nib on this pen meaning that it is only possible to underline with it.

Kaweco Sport Ice Glow Marker

With a traditional Plastic Kaweco Sport body the Ice Glow Marker at first just looks like an odd colour variation from Kaweco until you uncap the pen. Underneath the cap though, is a 1.9 mm calligraphy nib from Kaweco which while still smaller than some highlighter tips on the market is perfect for highlighting directly in a textbook or journal. I have had this pen in my collection for over a year and it is rare it isn't in my EDC kit while on the go to underline or star things I need to remember.

Kaweco Highlighter Ink

Only available in a 6 pack of cartridges Kaweco Glowing Yellow was my introduction to highlighter ink in fountain pen form. It is a very solid ink that is part of Kawecos standard line and like most of the other inks in their lineup, it has a very short dry time, I only wish it came in bottles. This ink can also be incredibly fun for sketching as it is very pale especially in an extra fine nib making it nearly invisible in a final piece.

Pelikan Highlighter Ink

This ink is available in 2 colours though I personally have only ever been able to track down the yellow version. The green version, though available, seems to be harder to get in North America. One of the really cool things about this ink is that it glows under black light making it super fun if you want to add dimension to an art project on black paper while still making it invisible in normal light.

Dry Highlighter

Kaweco Highlighter Lead

These leads fit in the 5.6 mm Sketch Up Clutch Pencil. The leads being dry means there is no chance of smearing your writing as long as the text is dry. These really just seem like highlighting with a coloured pencil to me but I do know people who really like them.

Sharpie Gel & Staedtler Textsurfer Gel Highlighters

Both of these get fairly good reviews in the pen world and of course I couldn't actually get my hands on either. The ad copy for both products is incredibly similar and the concept of a gel highlighter is very interesting. It sort of reminds me of Faber-Castell Gelatos except those were “watercolor chalks” and the highlighters are gel sticks. With both versions of the gel highlighter, it is important to write first and then highlight as they seem to use wax as their medium. The other downside is much like crayons once you wear down the tip they become harder to use precisely.

Faber Castell Pitt Artist Highlighter Yellow Pen

Wildcard

Faber-Castell PITT Pen

These pens are available in a huge variety of colours, nib sizes & styles. While they are mostly geared towards artists for drawing, sketching or coloring; over the years I have used mine to highlight as well and love using them for that because it means one less item I need to carry. These pens do work well over about 90% of the fountain pens I use with only shimmering and sheening inks being problematic. The other big bonus of these is the color selection they come in and the numbering system they use. Faber-Castell offers the pens in 60 colors and they use the same numbering structure across their products meaning that 133 is the number code for magenta across all the professional lines.

Highlighters are such a personal choice and really depend on your application and what other supplies you are using them with. If you plan to highlight over something sparkly or sheening I would only use a dry product like the Kaweco Highlighter Lead. For me though, as someone who is okay with highlighting over some inks and underlining under others; Zebra Mildliners, a Kaweco Ice Glow Highlighter, and Faber-Castell PITT pens have been my go-to for years and will probably be my go-to for years to come. I love the versatility of them as both highlighters, sketching tools and markers, but am sure at some point, I will end up venturing into the gel highlighter world as those seem promising as the most smudge-proof option for highlighting over most fountain pens.

About the Author

Alexandra Richardson is a Canadian watercolour and fountain pen content creator. She can be found on Instagram and Youtube under @alexandrasartinsanity.

Back to blog