The Best Glow-in-the-Dark Paint

Did you know that you can make almost anything glow-in-the-dark!?  All you need are a few coats of inexpensive craft paint to give items around the house a fun nighttime glow!  And, since I had a bit of time on my hands, I figured it would be fun to test what is the best glow in the dark paint.

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You might be thinking: Ummm, why are we talking about glow-in-the-dark paints now?  Are these photos from Halloween?  Isn’t Christmas next week!? 

And you would be correct!  Buttttt I also wanted to share this info before I forgot, ha.  And of course, just because I painted Halloween things with glow-in-the-dark paint, doesn’t mean that’s the only option.

In fact, you could paint almost anything with glow-in-the-dark paint… for any occasion!  Honestly, it would be super fun to have some glow-in-the-dark rocks outside during the summer.  Or random items around your house that glow at night!?  Secret messages written on the walls!?  The possibilities are endless!

(Although, maybe don’t do the writing on the wall thing).

Anyways, let’s get to it!

Testing Glow-in-the-Dark Paint

For a Halloween event this year, I was in charge of assembling two games.  The first was skull pong (like beer pong with skull cups).  And the second was a skeleton ring toss.  I wasn’t sure what the lighting would be like, and I wanted to add a spooky/fun element to my games.

While I searched for glow-in-the-dark paint on Amazon, it was Michael’s that had more options (that were much cheaper!).  I really wanted a pre-mixed glow-in-the-dark paint as opposed to a pigment/powder that you had to mix yourself.  Instead of getting just one bottle, I got four different kinds to test out!

Before even opening the bottles, I put them in the sun for a few seconds, then went to a dark area in my house (the floor of my closet) to see how they worked.  The wet paint actually glowed!  While there was clearly one standout, I still went through the process of labelling them and doing the whole experiment.

Glow-in-the Dark Paints Tested

For each of the paints, I haphazardly globbed/painted on the paint and waited for it to dry.  They are all milky in colour, but do dry clearer.  Not 100% clear, there was definitely a different sheen/feel to the cups.  Like a gritty, matte topcoat. 

The photo above shows the drying progression.  The cups on the right were painted first, and the one on the left was just painted.  While some of the paints promised a glow in as little as 1-2 coats, I figured I needed a few.  (I also tested the glow after each coat, and yeah… one coat wasn’t super good – but it did work!).

While these cups did glow better in real life than in photos, you can see from the image above that some of the paints were better than others.  As I guessed with the wet paint, #1 was clearly the best.  

Glow-in-the-Dark Paint Results

After a few coats, I also tested how they looked under a UV light.  I found that I could kind of move the UV light over and around the painted objects to “recharge” the glow.  Putting them in the sunlight to charge is best, but when you’re in dark room or can’t move your items, a portable UV light is also an option.

I also tested the cups to see how long they would last.  What good is glow-in-the-dark paint if it will only glow for a few minutes, right? 

While they were all their brightest for around thirty minutes, I honestly thought they had all lost their glow after an hour.  Nevertheless, I kept the cups at the bottom of the closet… and lo and behold, when I went to bed hours later – I could still see a faint glow in there!

(I like my room pitch black, and I didn’t think they were glowing anymore until it was completely dark). 

Which was annoying, ha. 

In the end, I decided to mix all the paints together.  I had twelve cups to paint, and I didn’t want them to be weirdly non-matching.  If I was buying glow-in-the-dark paint again, I would have just gone with the Ultimate Glow (OR the aqua or maybe a different colour).  Honestly, I kind of liked the mix of the green and aqua together.  Like a “whiter” glow.

And, since I had so much paint leftover, I gave a few coats to all my other random items!  The photo above shows the paint before it dried.  I went in one direction for one coat, then the other direction for the next coat to minimize the brush strokes.

I had to share the photo above because it has the cool rock skull I painted.  See how the glow paint emphasizes the lines for the eyeballs and teeth?  Glow-in-the-dark paint is a lot better for textured items with angles you want to highlight versus flat surfaces.

And here is a photo of the ring toss game I made.  I gave almost everything a coat of glow paint to make it stand out.  Oh, the green mini skull in the back was already a “glow” plastic.  AND I also got UV paint to test out too.  That was really cool if you have UV lights!

In the end, the glow-in-the-dark paint wasn’t quite as amazing as I assumed it would be for my purposes.  (It was an overcast day so I didn’t get to prep them in the sun at all).  BUT I still think that glow-in-the-dark rocks (or porch steps) would be really cool.  Basically, something you can put outside and let sit in the sun all day.

Buy Glow-in-the-Dark Paint at Michaels.com

Doing multiple coats of paint on all my ring toss and skull pong items probably used 8 ounces of paint.  Which means, if you have a bunch of little projects like me, you probably don’t need as much paint as I bought, ha!

Let me know if you have any glow in the dark paint ideas you want to do.  Or that you think I should test out :)