Space Engineers Paint Guide: Colors, Hotkeys, and Texture Packs

If your station looks like a gray brick floating in a gray void, the paint system can help. Space Engineers lets you recolor almost any block, from thrusters to refineries, and you can layer in texture packs for extra flair. Here is how to make it happen without fighting the menus.

Entering Color Mode

There are two quick ways into the painting workflow.

• Pick up any block in Block Placement Mode to enable color edits.
• Or press CTRL+G while seated in your ship's cockpit.

Once you have a block ready to place, hit P to open the Color Picker.

Picking a Color

The picker gives you presets out of the gate, but you can dial in anything you want using the hue, saturation, and vibrancy sliders. If you already have a specific shade in mind, type the hex code directly into the input field and skip the guesswork.

Cycling between colors during a build is faster than digging through the menu every time. Tap the [ and ] keys to flip backward and forward through your palette while you keep building.

Applying Paint to Blocks

Stay in Block Placement Mode and hover over the block you want to color. Then use the middle mouse button to paint the face you are looking at. The size of the painted area scales with modifier keys:

• CTRL + middle click paints a 3x3 area.
• SHIFT + middle click paints a 5x5 area.
• CTRL + SHIFT + middle click paints an entire connected grid.

Need to match a color you already used somewhere else? Press SHIFT+P while pointing at a painted face and the picker grabs that exact shade for reuse. Useful when you cannot remember the hex code from yesterday's session.

Texture Packs

Solid color is only half of the toolkit. Space Engineers ships with several textures by default, and paid DLC plus community mods add many more on top. Below is the texture lineup organized by source.

Vanilla Presets

• None
• Battered Armor
• Clean Armor
• Corrugated Armor
• CowMooFlage Armor
• Rusty Armor
• Weldless Armor
• Wood Armor

Automaton Pack

• Plastic Armor

Deluxe Edition Pack

• Golden Armor

Economy Deluxe Pack

• Disco Armor
• Glamour Armor
• Silver Armor

Frostbite Pack

• Frozen Armor

Heavy Industry Pack

• Hazard Armor

Sparks of the Future Pack

• Neon Colorable Lights
• Neon Colorable Surface
• SciFi Armor

Style Pack

• Mossy Armor
• Carbon Fiber Armor
• Digital Camouflage Armor

Warfare 2 Pack

• Woodland Camo Armor

Wasteland Pack

• Concrete Armor
• Dust Armor
• Heavy Rust Armor
• Retrofuture Armor

That covers the full painting toolkit. Mix solid colors with textures and your build will finally stop blending into the asteroid background.