Kada Kada Light and Dark have high saturation but are not inks with high vibrancy. Their colour is a somewhat soft and dusty dark grey purple. The main difference between Dark and Light apart from the obvious is that Dark has a less red visible. The colours to separate a little on the page meaning that you can sometimes see parts where the line is redder or bluer.

Kada Kada Light and Dark both have moderate lubrication and flow. They definitely aren't dry by any means but they aren't Sailor-level wetness either; the glide across the page nicely. The ink has good shading but it isn't extremely noticeable in wetter pens. There is some shading though to give it some character. Drytimes are on the slower end of the spectrum and the ink performs very well on Rhodia, Clairefontaine and Tomoe River but feathers pretty badly on cheap 80gsm copy paper. The colour also adopts more of a red look on copy paper and loses a lot of character. The dark characteristics of the ink wash away leaving a light pink glow behind so this ink is not very water resistant, as expected.

Somewhat astonishingly, there is absolutely no sheen on Tomoe River (though there is quite a decent halo effect on good paper). Kada Kada FPA Dark has a deep dark green sheen on Rhodia, but not on Tomoe River. This sheen doesn't appear when in a pen, however, only in wet swatch form.