Between all of the beautiful custom bikes, the mix of urban cargo bikes, and e-commuters of NAHBS & BFS each year, there are more expertly crafted professional paint jobs than we can imagine. But not everyone (or even for that matter many of us) can afford to drop several grand on a new custom bike, and then a few hundred bucks extra to get the truly custom look of a one-off paint job. That’s where the rattle cans of Spray.Bike come in, with even our off beat Watts lusting for some nice spray cans. And now Spray.Bike are getting even shinier for that deep glittery look. They’ve taken some inspiration from sparkly Keirin track bikes and developed a series of metallic do-it-yourself paints that are as easy to use as their solid colors, but now with deep glitter…
It’s all about that sparkle. The new Flake & Sunlight DIY paints really shine in sunlight, but are surprisingly low-key out of direct light.
The two new metallic-like paints embed either metal flakes – in the case of Flake – or crushed colored glass – in the case of Sunlight – into an easy to spray clearcoat to get the sparkly look. The small shiny pigments are much more expensive than those for solid color paints, but Spray.Bike has kept almost the same price at just £10 a can as the solid colors (OK, those are £8) by going with half the volume since you are already spraying over a solid paint job. There is still more than enough in one can to get your complete frame and fork sparkling.
The Sunlight is especially stealthy, almost disappearing on this black frame, while a bit of creatively masked green flake for the headtube badge is more visible.
In ambient light it doesn’t pop, but hit it with a direct light and Bam, colorful rainbow sparkles.
The Keirin Flake comes in 6 colors: Hibana blue, Hikuru red, Matataku green, Pikapika silver, Kirameki gold, and Kirakira multi which combines all of the other five for a rainbow effect. The Keirin Sunlight comes in just 4 colors: Tokyo Gold, Nagoya blue, Osaka purple, and Yokohama silver. Each comes in a 200ml can, and is easy to apply from about 30cm/12″ away and in two coats for the best effect and depth.
Spray.Bike tells us that you can spray over any of their regular colors, or even spray a bit on top of your factory bike’s finish to add a bit of bling. If you remember seeing the S-Works bikes of either road world champions Peter Sagan or Amalie Dideriksen, you might get an idea where to start.
We were pretty impressed with the original paints, now I’m just thinking what test bike I could return to its maker with a glittery top coat, without them getting really mad?
