Pokémon Pokopia: How to Get Paint and Recolor Furniture – Full Guide

How Paint Works in Pokémon Pokopia (Quick Overview)

Pokémon Pokopia hides one of its best base-building features behind story progress: the ability to craft paint and recolor your furniture and decorative objects. The game explains it very briefly when you reach Bahía Borrasca, so it’s easy to miss or arrive there with a half-decorated base you wish you could redo.

Here’s the short version of how paint and recolors work:

• You must finish the main errands in Estepa Estéril and be promoted in rank by Kyogre.
• That promotion lets you open the locked gate to the east and enter Bahía Borrasca.
• In Bahía Borrasca you find a <strong painter="" smeargle<="" strong=""> near the Snorlax cave who unlocks the paint system.
• Smeargle teaches you to turn berries into paint using Pokémon with the Pulverize specialty.
• You use Smeargle’s workshop to apply a specific color of paint to any furniture or object in your inventory.
• You can find pulverize Pokémon quickly with Pokédex filters (press Y while viewing the Pokédex).

The rest of this guide walks through each step in detail, with a practical route and small optimizations that helped me recolor a full base without wasting time or rare berries.

Step 1 – Progress the Story to Unlock Bahía Borrasca

You cannot access paint at all until you’ve finished the key objectives in Estepa Estéril, the arid, early-game biome. If you’ve been ignoring main errands to focus on farming or decorating, this is where you need to switch gears for a bit.

To reach the point where paint becomes available, you must:

• Complete the main errands given by the Pokémon in Estepa Estéril. These are marked clearly in your log and usually involve:
  • Repairing structures damaged by sandstorms
  • Helping out certain wild Pokémon with gathering or battles
  • Stabilizing the local weather so exploration is safer
• Advance the story until you trigger the encounter with Kyogre.
• Finish Kyogre’s associated tasks and receive a rank promotion.

That promotion is what matters for paint: it’s the flag the game checks to unlock the eastern gate of Estepa Estéril.

Once you’ve been promoted:

• Head to the eastern edge of Estepa Estéril.
• You’ll see the previously locked gate/compuerta with new dialogue acknowledging your rank.
• Interact with it to cross into the coastal biome Bahía Borrasca.

From a pacing perspective, expect this to be roughly when your base is decently established but not yet perfect. That’s actually ideal: you’ll unlock paint just in time to upgrade your furniture colors instead of rebuilding everything.

Step 2 – Find the Painter Smeargle in Bahía Borrasca

Once you’re in Bahía Borrasca, the game doesn’t mark Smeargle very loudly, so it’s easy to run past him while chasing other objectives. You need to track him down to unlock anything related to paint or recolors.

Here’s how to locate him reliably:

• From the first camp or base point you unlock in Bahía Borrasca, follow the coast heading toward the large Snorlax cave (you’ll usually notice it as a big rock formation with a dozing Snorlax icon on the map).
• Just before you reach the cave entrance, look for a small seaside studio: easels, paint buckets, and canvases set up on a wooden platform near the water.
• Smeargle stands there wearing a painter’s outfit (beret, scarf, paint-splattered tail).

Smeargle doesn’t move between time-of-day cycles in my experience, so you can visit him morning or night without issue. Make sure you talk to him as soon as you reach the area – the game essentially treats that conversation as the trigger for the whole paint system.

Step 3 – Unlock the Recolor Mechanic via Smeargle’s Requests

Your first conversation with Smeargle starts a short chain of simple requests. These act as a tutorial. Completing them is mandatory to fully unlock furniture recoloring.

Smeargle’s early requests usually include things like:

• Bringing him a specific berry color so he can demonstrate how pigment works.
• Letting him test repainting a small decorative object you don’t care much about.
• Delivering a small batch of paint to another NPC to “show off” his work.

Take the time to complete this chain right away. Once done, you unlock Smeargle’s main service:

• A workshop menu where you can:
  • Select a piece of furniture or decor from your inventory.
  • Choose a paint color from the paints you’ve crafted.
  • Preview and then confirm the recolor.

The exact in-game flow at Smeargle’s studio is typically:

• Interact with Smeargle → choose “Recolor furniture”.
• Pick the item slot from your inventory (beds, chairs, tables, lamps, etc.).
• Pick one of your available paint colors (if you don’t have any paint, this is your cue to craft some – see next section).
• Confirm. The game consumes the required amount of paint and changes the item’s color permanently (you can repaint it again later with a new color).

You can’t recolor directly from your placed base layout. You need to have the piece in your inventory, so get used to picking items up, recoloring them at Smeargle’s, then placing them back at your base.

Step 4 – Crafting Paint from Berries with Pulverize Pokémon

Knowing Smeargle isn’t enough – you also need a steady supply of paint in the colors you like. Pokémon Pokopia handles this with a clever system where berries are raw pigment, and certain Pokémon can pulverize them into paint.

The basic rule is:

• Give berries to a Pokémon with the Pulverize specialty → it turns them into paint of the same color as the berry.

To get started, you need two things:

• Some quantity of berries (any color).
• Access to at least one Pokémon in your area that has the Pulverize specialty.

Finding Pulverize Pokémon with the Pokédex Filter

Instead of wandering around and checking every wild Pokémon, use the built-in Pokédex tools. The game expects you to do this, but barely explains it.

Here’s the exact process:

• Open your Pokédex.
• Press Y to open the filter options.
• In the filter menu, switch to the tab for specialties/abilities.
• Enable the filter for Pulverize.
• Limit the search to your current zone (e.g., Bahía Borrasca) so the results are nearby.

After setting this filter, your Pokédex view will only show Pokémon that:

• Live in your current area, and
• Have the Pulverize specialty.

Highlight one of them in the Pokédex and mark it as a navigation target. On the overworld, follow your compass or map marker to find it quickly. This is much faster than randomly exploring.

Turning Berries into Paint

Once you’ve found (or recruited) a Pulverize Pokémon, the conversion step is straightforward:

• Interact with your Pulverize Pokémon at the appropriate workstation or camp.
• Choose the option related to processing items (usually labeled clearly in the interaction menu).
• Select the berries you want to pulverize:
  • Red berries → red paint
  • Blue berries → blue paint
  • Yellow berries → yellow paint
  • Green berries → green paint
  • Etc., following the color of the berry skin
• Confirm the quantity. The Pokémon will convert them into paint jars or units of that color.

Different berry types of the same color usually produce the same base paint color, so you don’t need to stress over exact berry species unless you’re saving specific ones for cooking or other crafts.

Paint is then stored in your materials/inventory, and Smeargle will automatically detect it when you open the recolor menu.

Step 5 – Managing Berries and Colors Efficiently

When I first unlocked paint, I burned through random berries and ended up short on ones I actually needed for recipes. A bit of planning makes the entire system smoother, especially if you like decorating heavily.

Decide Your Base Color Palette First

Before converting anything, decide roughly what your base should look like:

• Warm, cozy lodge → lots of browns, reds, oranges.
• Clean, coastal vibe → whites, blues, light greens.
• Industrial or modern style → dark grays, blacks, metallics with accent colors.

Even though the game maps some of these to specific paints or mixed recipes later, the foundation is berry color. If you know you want a blue-white base, prioritize saving and farming blue and pale berries for paint.

Keep a “Do Not Pulverize” Berry Stash

Some berries are more useful for cooking or other crafting recipes than they are for paint. I like to keep a separate, mental or box-based “do not pulverize” stash:

• Rare berries used in high-tier meals.
• Quest-related berries you know you’ll need later.
• Berries with special effects in battle or exploration.

Use your common, easily farmed berries as your main paint fodder. If you’re not sure, start by pulverizing only the ones you have in stacks of 20+.

Batch Your Paint Sessions

Running back and forth between your base, berry fields, Pulverize Pokémon, and Smeargle gets old fast. To cut down on travel time:

• Spend some time mass-harvesting berries first (using whatever farming tricks you’ve unlocked).
• Convert a large batch of berries into paint in one visit to your Pulverize Pokémon.
• Then visit Smeargle and recolor several items in one go before returning to your base.

This “batch workflow” lets you renovate big parts of your base in one sitting with fewer loading screens and transitions.

Step 6 – Recoloring Furniture Without Losing Track

Once you’re generating paint steadily, the bottleneck becomes organization: it’s easy to forget which items you meant to recolor or end up with mismatched colors all over the place.

Here’s a clean approach:

• Pick one room or area of your base at a time (e.g., main hall, bedroom, workshop).
• Enter build mode and pick up every piece of furniture from that room that you intend to recolor.
• Travel to Bahía Borrasca and talk to Smeargle.
• Recolor all those pieces to the chosen palette for that room.
• Return to your base and re-place everything before starting the next room.

This way, you avoid mixing styles unintentionally and don’t end up with half-finished recolors scattered across your base. It also makes it easier to count exactly how much paint you need for a given room.

Common Mistakes When Using Paint (And How to Avoid Them)

Because the game doesn’t over-explain the painting system, there are a few pitfalls almost everyone hits at least once.

• Waiting too long to unlock Smeargle
  Players focused on home-building often stall in Estepa Estéril, decorating with default colors. Once you know paint exists, it’s worth pushing the main errands until you reach Bahía Borrasca as soon as your team and base are stable.
• Wasting rare berries on basic paint
  If you throw every berry into Pulverize early on, you’ll regret it when a cooking or quest recipe needs them. Keep an eye on which berry names are rare or appear in other crafting menus and preserve a buffer.
• Forgetting that recolors need the item in your inventory
  New players sometimes stand at Smeargle’s studio wondering why their favorite bed isn’t in the menu – it’s still placed back at the base. Always pick items up first.
• Ignoring the Pokédex filter
  Hunting for Pulverize Pokémon without using the Y filter is pure time loss. The filter is precise and updates per area, so make it your first step whenever you enter a new biome and need more paint specialists.
• Overcommitting to a color before seeing it in-game
  What looks great in your head may clash with the lighting or wall textures of your base. Before converting hundreds of berries into one color, recolor just a handful of key items and live with them for a bit to see if you like the effect.

Practical Takeaway: When to Prioritize Paint in Your Playthrough

For most players, the sweet spot for focusing on paint and recolors in Pokémon Pokopia is right after you unlock Bahía Borrasca and meet Smeargle, but before you invest heavily in late-game furniture sets.

• Push the main errands in Estepa Estéril until Kyogre promotes you.
• Head straight into Bahía Borrasca and talk to the painter Smeargle near the Snorlax cave.
• Use the Pokédex filter to find Pulverize Pokémon and start turning common berries into paint.
• Test a few recolors, decide on your preferred color themes, then batch repaint your base room by room.

Handled this way, the paint system becomes a natural extension of your progression instead of a late surprise. You end up with a base that actually matches your style, and you avoid the usual trap of rebuilding everything once you finally discover how flexible the furniture customization really is.