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Painting brass light fixtures

19 years ago

I just picked up 3 light fixtures from a freecycler this evening & would like to know if there's any special techniques for painting on brass. The 3 fixtures are fine, but shiny brass isn't really my thing.

There's one chandelier, one ceiling fan & one pendant. The pendant is like a big bowl & I was thinking about using glass paint on the glass bowl part. The ceiling fan will definately be painted. It's going in my 11 yo DD's room & her theme is Out of Africa.

Please give me input before I go buying paint to give these my touch. Thanks!

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Comments (3)

Ina Plassa_travis
19 years ago
spray paint is the best thing for painting the fixtures that I've ever found, honestly. for most cases, Rustoleum is perfect for the job, and comes in a pretty good selection of colors.

another option is to prime and paint with automotive spray paints (from the autoparts store) which sometimes come in different colors.

a third option is to patina them either green or rust, since they're metal to begin with (there are a ton of kits for this out there)
SandiD
Original Author
19 years ago
Thanks! I bought some Rustoleum Hammered Dark Bronze & some Brown Hammered today. I'll let my DD choose which one she wants & I'll decide what color I want for the other two later.
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Thank you! I'll probably do something in between. I prime just about anything I paint, so I'll do that. I'm kind of afraid to sand because of the danger of scratches. I'm not sure I have the feel for light sanding. I love "if I ever remember to dust". That's me. I'll try to post some before and after pics if I can be that organized. Then you can wonder why I bothered with such an ugly fixture. Thanks again, Susan
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Missy, I don't really have anything to add to the techniques listed above--all good advice. What I did want to mention is that I recently spray painted a brass bed and I used a mixture of Rustoleum Metallic Copper and Metallic Oil Rubbed Bronze and love the way it turned out. I also like Krylon ORB but it really looks black rather than bronzy. The flat black as mentioned by Porkandham above always looks good, too. Looks sort of like iron (imo) when finished. Good luck with your project.
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Lindy_B
19 years ago
I spraypainted 2 hanging lights with spray paint, one silver and one pink. They turned out so cute. It gives a lamp a whole new look!

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