Restoration is the engine that drives Pokémon Pokopia, and painting turns out to be one of its most satisfying expressions. Not just slapping a coat of color on a wall, but a layered system involving a Smeargle NPC, berry-based dye crafting, and throwable Paint Balloons that let you recolor furniture and homes across the Dream Islands.
Getting to Smearguru in Bleak Beach
The whole painting skill is gated behind a single NPC encounter. You need Great Trainer status before the gate connecting the Withered Wasteland to Bleak Beach will open. Once you're through, head to the north side of Bleak Beach and you'll find a Smeargle named Smearguru painting at an easel under a gazebo.
Speaking to Smearguru kicks off a short quest. They want dye powder made from crushed Leppa Berries, which requires a Pokémon with the Crush specialty. Onix is the go-to pick since most players have one after the Withered Wasteland quests, but the list of eligible Pokémon is long, including Steelix, Conkeldurr, Tyranitar, Metagross, Tyrantrum, and Aurorus, among others.
Once you hand over the dye powder, Smearguru converts it into paint and unlocks their recoloring service. From that point, they can repaint items and furniture for you. Recoloring your actual home is possible too, but you'll need to bring Smearguru to the building and already have the paint color ready in your inventory.
Paint Balloons: doing it yourself
Relying on Smearguru every time gets old fast. The solution is Paint Balloons, which you toss directly at whatever you want to recolor. Craft them at any workbench using paints you've already acquired, or pick them up from the shop when they're in stock.
The base paint colors come from specific berries:
Black and White are earned as random bonuses during other color crafts, but there's a reliable shortcut: get Withered Wasteland's Environment Level to 10 and the shop will carry unlimited Black and White paint.
From those 8 base colors, mixing produces 10 additional balloon variants. The combinations are straightforward once you see the pattern:
That brings the total to 18 balloon colors currently available.
Paint Balloon crafting menu
Patterns and Vespiquen's role
Solid colors are just the starting point. Smearguru also holds a selection of patterns from the beginning, but the more interesting unlock path runs through Vespiquen in the Withered Wasteland. Exchange Honey with her and the reward items she gives back often carry patterns printed on them. Bring those patterned items to Smearguru at Bleak Beach and those patterns become available for your own customization work. The same process applies to patterned items bought from the shop.
Here's the thing: the painting system rewards players who engage with multiple systems simultaneously. Berry farming feeds paint crafting, which feeds balloon production, while Vespiquen trading unlocks the pattern library on a separate track. None of it is particularly hard, but it does mean the full customization toolkit opens up gradually rather than all at once.
For players wanting to push the island-building side of Pokopia as far as it goes, the Pokémon Pokopia guides collection covers the other major systems worth pairing with painting, including lava pool construction and the 3D Printer mechanic that can copy items wholesale.
