How Does Glow In The Dark Paint Work

If you recently heard of a magic-like paint that glows in the dark, you must be willing to know how it works in awe of its orb-like glow.

Unlike other articles on the internet, I won’t go into technical Jargon and will simplify it as much as possible so everyone can easily understand. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Before we really go in-depth, you must know the components of these glow paints. These paints are made using acrylic paint and glow pigments. You must be very familiar with acrylic paint. These are just the normal water-type paint you have used as a kid or maybe are still using.

Acrylic paints are usually a little thick to make them adhere well and are easy to use, whereas glow pigments are just, well, pigments. Oh! I forgot to talk about glow pigments. So, these are pigments or crystals that have this incredible power of absorbing the light and emitting it slowly.

They take the light as a charge and then release this charge slowly, which produces the glow. Actually, the light doesn’t charge, but the invisible UV rays inside it do it. And more robust the source, the stronger the UV rays.

In simple words, these pigments are nothing but the moon that takes charge of the sun and uses it slowly to produce an all-night glow. There are many glow pigments like Strontium Aluminate, europium-doped aluminate oxide, etc., but since I promised not to be a boring teacher, I won’t go into detail.

All you have to remember is that these pigments have some size. And when you are mixing them with paint, you need to have a balance for it to work well.

If you have little pigments compared to the paint, it won’t glow, and if you have more, it will be gritty and feel irritating, or may even get messy. So, these pigments have to be mixed in balance.

Some paints like Ultra Green V10 have an excess of these pigments, making it very gritty, while others like Aurora have balanced it. Aurora is a thick paint and has many pigments, but still has no graininess, no chunks, nothing, just smooth paint.

So, this thing has to be taken into consideration. Once both the things, i.e., Paint and glow pigments, get mixed, they get the qualities of both, i.e., they are easy to apply and glow in the dark.

So, a glow-in-the-dark paint work by taking the light as its charge and then releasing that charge slowly to produce a glow. Now, this thing doesn’t end here as there is a much bigger picture to it.

Apart from the pigments’ the quality of the charge is very crucial. Think of it in this way: would it charge the moon as compelling as today if the sun wasn’t 400 times bigger than the moon?

Well, the answer is an absolute NO. Even if it gets less than 100 times and gets like 300 times bigger, the glow would also decrease. Why? Because the charger isn’t that effective.

A bad charger wouldn’t produce a long-lasting glow. Similarly, if the charger isn’t good in glow-in-the-dark paint, the glow wouldn’t either. So, what am I referring to when I say charge?

Well, sources that give potent lights. Some of the famous chargers are direct sunlight, lamplights, UV Blacklight, LED light, high wattage bulbs, etc. But the best of all is a Blacklight.

It’s like the sun of glow paints as it can charge them effectively. While most other sources take minutes and hours, a Blacklight roughly takes seconds and minutes.

A Blacklight can show you the best potential of any glow paint.

Conclusion –

In this article, I answered one of the questions asked by many people, i.e., how does glow-in-the-dark paint work. I answered it in a relatively simple tone and ensured there was no technical jargon. If you liked my article, share it with your friends and family, especially with a philomath.