(Unanswered question from 2008) How does prismatic paint work?
Asked by
syz (
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March 28th, 2013
I’ve seen cars painted with garish (but undeniably fascinating) paint jobs that change colors depending on the viewing angle – purple to green being the most common in this area. How does it work? I’ve only seen two color combinations. Are the colors unlimited or based on some sort of refraction coefficient?
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They start with a base coat of regular paint, then apply a very thin layer consisting of a transparent carrier filled with minute flakes (of mica, I think) coated with titanium oxides. These flakes produce a color by interference when viewed from a particular angle relative to the light source. Then the paint is given a final clear coat.
The middle coat appears colorless when not seen from the “magic” angle, so the paint appears to be the color of the base coat. But when the viewing angle hits the sweet spot, the coated flakes work their magic and throw the interference color at your eye.
I love the effect as well. For some reason though every time I see a car painted like this in my area, it’s an old POS vehicle. The paint job itself probably cost more than the car. Confuses the hell outta me :P
Spectraflair™ and Prismatic™ are products from Custom Creation Paints in the UK. They use a pigment made up of tiny colored crystals, 35 micron crystals in Spectra Xtreme™ and 14 micron in Prismatic. Each crystal is adding its color to the light passing through it, but the angle determines the color the eye sees coming off each point on a surface painted with the material.
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