Gold was the last pigment to be laid down over large areas of the painting. Since gold needed a smooth undercoat when applied as a solid colour to a sizable area, its application was postponed until after the scraping of the initial coats of colour and the subsequent dusting and cleaning of the painting surface. Another reason was that no painter would ever scrape off and thus waste any of this precious pigment. The gold used in Tibetan painting was thought of as a pious offering; although the merit (bsod nams) of the painting project depended mainly on the attitude and motivation of those involved, the offering of more gold could make the merit commensurately greater.

金色是绘画大面积上色时最后使用的颜料。由于在大面积区域应用金色时需要平滑的底层，因此在刮掉初层颜色并随后进行表面除尘和清洁后才会进行金色的应用。另一个原因是没有画家会刮掉并浪费这种珍贵的颜料。藏族绘画中使用的金色被视为虔诚的供奉；尽管绘画项目的功德（bsod nams）主要取决于参与者的态度和动机，但提供更多的金色可以相应地增加功德。

Once the amount of gold had been determined by patron and painter, it was the duty of the painter to see to it that every bit of the gold was used as intended. With the exception of a few recent paintings, nearly every thangka used at least a little real gold. One can discern at least four degrees of gold use in thangka painting. The ultimate application is the full-gold thangka (gser thang), where the composition was rendered with a bare minimum of dyes and pigments over a solid field of unburnished gold. A middling use is found in paintings where the main figures, together with many details and outlines, have been rendered with gold paint. The minimum use is when only outlines and certain details were painted in gold, and the majority of thangkas incorporated this minimal application. Finally, a fourth and special type is found in black and vermilion thangkas, where the whole composition was usually executed with gold line drawings, sometimes combined with solid or shaded areas of gold. When the painter applied gold in fine line drawings no undercoat was necessary; however, when painting larger areas a coat of yellow ochre or some similar colour had to be laid down as the gold undercoat (gser rten). Since yellow ochre itself had a subdued golden hue, an undercoat of it lessened the amount of real gold needed to achieve a rich, solid-looking coverage. For this reason painters nowadays continue to use such undercoats even when applying powdered-brass imitation gold (rag rdul).

一旦赞助人和画家确定了金色的使用量，画家的职责就是确保每一分金色都被按预定用途使用。除了少数近代绘画，几乎每幅唐卡都至少使用了一点真金。在唐卡绘画中可以辨别出至少四种程度的金色使用。最高级的应用是全金唐卡（gser thang），其构图使用最少量的染料和颜料，覆盖在一片未经抛光的金色上。中等使用量的画作中，主要人物和许多细节以及轮廓都用金色绘制。最低使用量是仅绘制轮廓和某些细节，大多数唐卡都采用这种最小的应用。最后一种特殊类型是在黑色和朱红色唐卡中，整个构图通常用金线绘制，有时会结合实心或渐变的金色区域。当画家用细线绘制金色图案时不需要底层涂料；然而，当绘制较大区域时，需要先涂一层赭黄色或类似颜色作为金色的底层（gser rten）。由于赭黄色本身具有柔和的金色调，使用它作为底层可以减少实现丰富、实心外观所需的真金量。出于这个原因，即使在使用黄铜粉仿金（rag rdul）时，画家们仍然会使用这种底层。