Although acrylic can initally be pretty cool looking, we’ve never been crazy about it given it’s tendency to scratch and yellow with age. But recently, Design Milk’s Interview with Aaron R. Thomas, “Master of All Things Acrylic” shifted our view a bit. When we saw the acrylic furniture Thomas had painted, a light bulb went off. We were reminded of our long-ago post on Reverse Painted Glass. You can do to acrylic what you can do to glass, you just need to know how.

reverse painted glass

We found very detailed instructions at Overclockers. Aaron McBride covers the basics of how to paint steel, alumnum, plastic and acrylic, which he figured out by trial and error:

Tired of that acrylic case? Or maybe you have an acrylic part that you need to paint to match your case, then this is for you. This stuff is pretty tricky. Up until the point when I decided to paint acrylic, I could not find any information about it on the forums and most information on the internet was quite vague. After running into a few problems and many hours of testing, below is the way that seems to work best...

We’re figuring that you’d paint the side of the acrylic that doesn’t get wear —the inside OR opposite side — so that, in effect, it becomes reverse-painted acrylic, the shiny plastic on top of the paint.

Aaron R. Thomas
Aaron R. Thomas

Now we’re looking at acrylic through new eyes, with new possibilities…

Aaron R. Thomas via design-milk.com
Aaron R. Thomas

via Design Milk 

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