Curious about CS2 finishes? Broadly speaking, the finish determines how the skin looks in different wear conditions, but also imposes some rules on how the skin can be customized by the artist during the skin creation process. In this article, we’ll go over every skin finish in detail, giving you examples, explanations, and all the facts needed to understand CS2 finishes and perhaps even get started with making your own skins. Let’s get started!

Contents

• Solid Color
• Spray-Paint
• Hydrographic
• Patina
• Custom Paint Job
• Gunsmith
• Anodized
• Anodized Multicolored
• Anodized Airbrushed
• Summary

Solid Color

Let’s start with the simplest finish. As the name suggests, this style uses only solid colors, with no patterns or images. Obvious examples of this style include the all-black Night and all-white Whiteout skin series: 

However, Solid Color Style skins don’t have to feature just one color. This finish supports up to four colors, which are applied to a skin based on pre-defined areas. Every weapon is divided, by default, into areas numbered from 0 to 3. Skin creators can assign a different color to each of these numbers, essentially using a paint-by-numbers system. 

Here are more examples of Solid Color skins (click images to expand): 

Despite their simplicity, Solid Color skins aren’t always cheap. There are plenty of examples of expensive skins that feature this finish, including two we’ve seen above: P250 | Whiteout ($30–$230) and MP9 | Bulldozer ($70–$960). 

As far as CS2 finishes go, Solid Color skins are a relatively small group, perhaps because this style doesn’t offer much room for creativity. 

Spray-Paint

The Spray-Paint CS2 finish applies a pattern over the entire surface of the weapon. It does so using triplanar mapping—a method that basically overlays an image of the pattern over the complete weapon, as if you were to spray-paint the whole thing using a stencil. 

Many simple skins with camo patterns are spray-painted, although more intricate designs in this finish are also common. Check these out: 

It’s possible for Spray-Paint skins to have different pattern numbers that affect the final look of the skin. The pattern (or seed) number determines the exact positioning of the pattern on the weapon, if the pattern image is larger than the weapon’s surface. (Imagine you have a large stencil and a small handgun—there would be numerous ways to lay the stencil over the gun to paint it.) That’s not always the case, though: some Spray-Painted skins have a fixed pattern, like FAMAS | Spitfire. 

Although the words spray paint immediately bring the idea of graffiti to mind, note that not all graffiti skins use the Spray-Paint finish. Some, like M249 | Downtown, are actually Custom Paint Jobs. 

Spray-Paint skins wear layer by layer, eventually revealing the substrate (material) underneath all coats of paint. When you look at a Field-Tested Galil AR | Crimson Tsunami, you can see that as the top coat (wave graphic) wears off, it reveals the red background layer first, then the metal of the rifle. 

Here’s AK-47 | Predator again, this time in Battle-Scarred condition, with metal and wood showing from underneath the coat of paint. It’s easy to see why Factory New skins in this finish are often considerably more expensive than higher-float conditions. 

Hydrographic

The Hydrographic finish basically combines a pattern on some areas of the weapon with solid color(s) on the rest. Up to four distinct colors can be used, though it’s also possible to use a gradient effect, which adds some extra shades to the mix. 

Here are some examples of Hydrographic finishes: 

The Hydrographic finish in CS2 is inspired by a real technique known as water transfer printing, or Hydrographics. In this process, a special film with a pattern or image is placed on the surface of water in a large tank. A prepared and primed object is then lowered into the water, causing the film to “stick” to the surface, applying the image. This technique is indeed used to customize weapons, but also car parts, motorbike helmets, rims, and just about anything else you can think of. Check out this video to see it in action: 

How the Hydrographic Finish Works in CS2

Now let’s see how Hydrographic skins in CS2 are made. (Skip ahead to the next finish if you’re not all that interested.) First, the creator makes a file with a pattern that will appear on the weapon. The pattern is applied separately to each part of the weapon—just like in real life, where you’d disassemble the gun before applying Hydrographics to each component. This is referred to as UV application, or texture mapping, and it’s different from the triplanar mapping used in the Spray-Paint style—with triplanar mapping, the texture is applied to the weapon as a whole, not to individual parts. 

The creator then chooses up to four colors for their skin. Two of these choices will affect only the pattern itself, and the other two will also appear as solid colors on pre-defined parts of the weapon. (When talking about the Solid Color finish, we mentioned each weapon in CS2 is divided into areas—two of the colors chosen by the creator will fill in some of these areas as solid colors.) Let’s take PP-Bizon | Blue Streak as an example: 

The four colors chosen by the artist include three shades of blue plus black. The two lightest shades of blue appear only in the pattern. The darkest blue appears in the pattern, but also on the grip and around the trigger, and black appears in both the pattern and on the stock. 

Patina

This one’s kind of confusing, but hey, we’ll get through it. So, the word “patina” usually refers to how metal changes its appearance with age. Aged metal is often considered better-looking—there are even special treatments designed to artificially age new metal to make it look more interesting. 

That’s pretty much what the Patina finish does: it enables skins to visibly “age” at higher float values while still looking good. Most CS2 finishes cause the paintwork on guns to get scuffed and scratched, showing the metal or base coat underneath, but Patina skins stay intact even in Battle-Scarred condition. Settings enable the artist to determine the wear characteristics of the skin, and usually the only change you’ll notice at higher floats is a shift in color vibrancy. Check out the most famous Patina skin in different floats to see what I mean: 

This quality makes Patina the finish of choice for skins that are supposed to show carvings or etchings. After all, if you had a gun with decorative etchings on it, they wouldn’t just rub off with age like paint would. Here are some examples: 

For the same reason, the Patina finish is also suitable for skins that emulate artificial metal treatments like case-hardening or bluing, and effects like rust or oxidization. You’ve all heard of Case Hardened skins, and as far as real-life equivalents go, case-hardening is a process that basically strengthens metal, while bluing protects steel from rust. Here are some more examples of Patina skins that aim for these effects: 

When creating a Patina skin, artists apply an image containing an illustration or a pattern onto each individual part of the weapon via the UV method (like with the Hydrographic finish). Not all parts of the weapon can be customized with this finish—the system limits which areas the artist can edit on each gun. Some Patina skins (including, famously, the Case Hardened series) have multiple pattern options, others are fixed. 

Custom Paint Job

The Custom Paint Job is exactly what it sounds like: it enables artists to apply images and textures to guns with as much freedom as possible. It’s a common choice for skins that go for a hand-painted look. It’s also one of the most popular CS2 finishes—a large proportion of skins use this style, including many of the most expensive skins in CS2: 

Custom Paint Job skins only have one fixed pattern, and they wear to the substrate, revealing a dark-gray base. How much of the original design is gone at the highest floats depends on the skin: some will still be largely intact, while others will be barely recognizable.

Gunsmith

The Gunsmith finish is a combination of the Patina and Custom Paint Job styles. Remember the pre-defined “paint-by-numbers” areas on each gun? The same system works here to determine which parts of the gun will be Custom-Painted, and which will receive the Patina finish. With Patina, only some parts of each gun can be customized—take a look at AWP | Medusa above, and you’ll notice that only the body of the rifle is painted, leaving parts like the magazine, scope, and barrel “blank”. The Gunsmith finish enables creators to fill in those blanks with Custom Paint Job graphics. 

Here are some examples of Gunsmith skins: 

In terms of showing wear, Gunsmith skins behave according to the finish of each individual part—the Patina elements don’t degrade, only changing color, while the Custom Paint Job wears off, revealing the substrate underneath. Check out this wear preview video for AWP | Gungnir: 

The blue body of the rifle is the Patina part, so it changes very slightly even in Battle-Scarred condition. The rest of the skin is Custom Painted, and it deteriorates visibly as float increases. 

If you like this finish, check out our list of the best Gunsmith skins in CS2 for every weapon next!

Anodized

Anodized skins always feature just one color on a pre-determined area of the gun. The colors used in Anodized skins are usually bright and have a metallic, candy-coat look: 

There are relatively few Anodized skins in CS2—seventeen, to be exact, with no knife skins. Technically, they’re supposed to wear to the chrome base coat first, and then to the substrate. In practice, however, all currently available Anodized skins have a maximum float of 0.08 (0.04 for Blue Titanium), so any wear is hardly visible. 

Anodizing is a real process, used to make metal more resistant to wear and corrosion (hence the low float!) by increasing the thickness of its natural oxide layer. It’s most commonly used with aluminum, and it involves immersing aluminum parts in an acid electrolyte bath and passing an electric current through the whole thing. The metal can be colored in the process, achieving a look very similar to the Anodized finish in the game, although to be clear, most of the gun parts seen in CS2 wouldn’t be made of aluminum. 

Anodized Multicolored

Anodized Multicolored skins have a metallic sheen similar to that of Anodized skins, but this finish offers a lot more room for creativity. Up to four colors can be used in the making of an Anodized Multicolored skin, as well as a pattern. The pattern is applied to individual parts of each weapon, and the paint-by-numbers system determines which part of each weapon will be patterned, and which will have solid colors—much like with the Hydrographic finish. 

Many, if not most, knife skins have the Anodized Multicolored finish, including the Gamma Doppler and Doppler skins, Slaughter, Tiger Tooth, and plenty of others. 

Unlike Anodized skins, the Anodized Multicolored finish wears directly to the substrate and can have a large float range, so Battle-Scarred skins with this finish will show a lot of wear:

Just in case anyone’s wondering, the finish is “anodized” only by name—it’s impossible to achieve patterned or multicolored effects when anodizing metal in real life. 

Anodized Airbrushed

Anodized Airbrushed skins have the metallic candy coat of the other Anodized-style skins. This finish is very similar to the Anodized Multicolored style, with two differences. Firstly, Anodized Airbrushed skins wear to chrome, then substrate, not directly to substrate. Secondly, patterns in this finish are applied using the triplanar method, which we already met when discussing the Spray-Paint finish—it’s basically like painting the entire weapon through a stencil, rather than applying patterns to individual weapon parts (UV method). 

Anodized Airbrushed skins rarely wear to the point of the design disappearing, more often showing just scuffs and scratches around the edges: 

CS2 Finishes: Summary

That was a lot to take in. Let’s put it all into a table for easy reference: 

Finish	Colors	Pattern	Wears to	Pattern application
Solid Color	up to 4	no	substrate	n/a
Spray-Paint	up to 4	yes	previous layer, then substrate	triplanar (whole weapon)
Hydrographic	up to 4	yes	substrate	UV (individual parts)
Patina	up to 4 (determine wear characteristics)	yes (full color image)	wear depends on settings	UV
Custom Paint Job	n/a (image is used instead)	yes (full color image)	substrate	UV
Gunsmith	up to 4 (determine wear characteristics)	yes (full color image)	substrate (painted parts), depends on settings (Patina parts)	UV
Anodized	1	no	chrome, then substrate	n/a
Anodized Multicolored	up to 4	yes	substrate	UV
Anodized Airbrushed	up to 4	yes	chrome, then substrate	triplanar

There! Now you know just about everything about CS2 finishes, at least as far as buying and appreciating skins go. Making CS2 skins is more complicated, with additional factors, settings, and processes, but you definitely have the basics covered now. If you have any questions, hit us up on social media, and as always, have fun on Key-Drop!