Best paints for non-metallic metal (NMM)

Non-metallic metal (NMM) paints metal with ordinary opaque colours instead of metallic paint: very dark shadows, a mid tone, and highlights that go almost to white, so the eye reads the contrast as shine. Gold leans brown in the shadows and toward ivory in the highlights; steel stays a cool grey.

Work from the darkest step up. Keep each band narrower than the one before, and finish with tiny glints where the light hits hardest.

Each ramp below is built the way the Ramps mode on the colour wheel builds one: we set a target colour for each step, then pick the nearest opaque paint in each brand (no metallics, washes or contrast paints, and no paint used twice). ΔE says how far each paint is from its target: close is under 6, fair under 12. Swatch colours are estimates, so test the ramp on a spare model first. On the wheel you can build the same ramp from any paint, or only from the paints you own.