When I was younger, I painted my room an electric, lime green. Every time I opened the door, my heart filled with joy. Every time other people opened the door, they looked frantic.
Then came the caffeine-fueled, late-night study sessions of my college days, filled with page after page of highlighted, neon notes I was somehow supposed to memorize. Color-coding my notes helped me stay organized while studying, but ever since, the fluorescent colors I loved as a kid have filled me with the same low-key panic I felt before a test.
That anxious energy isn’t what I want to carry into the rest of my adult life — but I still love to highlight. That’s why I’m a fan of Zebra Mildliners, chilled-out highlighters that come in pretty pastels and faded fluorescents and add emphasis sans panic to my to-do lists and daily notes.
I use my Mildliners to make lists, color-code calendars, highlight priorities, and add a bit of decor to my Traveler’s Notebook (and, for many years prior, my bullet journal). Though my days of serious studying are long over, I still use them to highlight books and printed documents.
These muted highlighters have a chisel tip and a fine tip, and they come in pretty pastels, faded fluorescents, and sophisticated grays and browns. But they tend to smudge the ink of gel pens.
With 40 desaturated colors to choose from — including springtime pinks, understated yellows, wintery blues, sherbety oranges, rich purples, steely grays, and autumnal neutrals like olive and copper — it’s the most comprehensive (and sophisticated) highlighter collection I’ve ever seen. JetPens and some art stores sell singles for around $2, but they are most available in packs of five, bundled under color palette names like “friendly” and “gentle.”
They also have two tips: a bold chisel tip ideal for highlighting and a fine tip perfect for your underlining, doodling, and decorating needs. As expected, the chisel tip does its job of precisely covering text. It’s not as juicy as other highlighters, but that means lines dry quickly and don’t tend to bleed through pages the way inkier highlighters can.
The fine tip, though, is what makes Mildliners truly unique — allowing them to essentially function like regular markers. Not only is the tip useful for underlining, but the shades are rich enough that you can also use it to write chunky text, draw shapes, or color in a design.
In fact, I use them so often and find them so versatile that I always take one or two with me on a trip. They’re perfect for brightening up my journal, organizing my packing list, and other pop-of-color emergencies that arise on the road, like adding flair to a postcard. I add slashes of color to my packing list as headers for overarching categories (toiletries, clothes) then color-code items I want to put in my backpack or need to collect at the last minute.
As a color lover, I was surprised to find I use the mild gray Mildliner most, which is perfect as it is for creating subtle shadows on lettering and other designs. (If you plan to use your highlighter mostly for art-making, Zebra has a version with a brush tip instead of a chisel tip, with a superfine tip on the other end.)
Mildliner’s primary flaw is that some ink — particularly gel ink — can smudge pretty badly while being highlighted. But not every gel pen is off limits, and there’s also an easy solution: Just use a ballpoint. Wirecutter’s favorite pen, the Uni-ball Jetstream RT, doesn’t smudge at all.
Top pick
Wirecutter’s go-to for everyday writing, this ballpoint pen has quick-drying ink that Mildliners won’t smudge.
There’s another workaround if you, like me, are devoted to your gel pen of choice. I love my very, very smudgable Uni-ball Signo RT1, the fine-tip gel pen of my dreams (and another Wirecutter favorite). I tried to switch to Zebra’s Mojiniline highlighters, which are more smear resistant, but they don’t come in the same calming shades. Since I apparently can’t sacrifice either the Signo or Mildliner, I just highlight first, then write the text on top. If I forget, I underline instead of highlight. It works for me.
If I’m going to nitpick, Mildliner ink tends to pool slightly at the beginning and the end of a highlighted line, though this is subtle and doesn’t bother me. I also find a few of the colors a little dark for highlighting text. But unless you’re all-in on neon, I find it difficult to come up with too many objections. Mildliners tend to be crowd-pleasers, the trifecta of fun, useful, and unique that makes a versatile gift.
In fact, our gift team suggests buying a box then distributing them in singles as party favors. The pastel set makes a fun Easter basket goody for older kids, and they’re also ideal as stocking stuffers for high school students, college students, and other office-supply loving grown-ups.
Adulthood, I used to think, would be boring. You seemed to lose childhood’s color everywhere, trading in bright sugar cereals, holographic stickers, and rainbow leggings for bran, manila envelopes, and beige sweaters.
Turns out, I still haven’t come around on beige, but I also don’t want to live in the neon green room of my youth. Adulthood contains enough stresses that I don’t need every part of my life to scream in technicolor. And I really don’t need my daily notes and to-do lists to look any more urgent than they already are. Mildliners offer the perfect balance: color, yes, but also calm.
This article was edited by Katie Okamoto and Maxine Builder.
