I’m currently sleeping in LongJohn’s room (though he talks in his sleep and I miss my giant squishy bed) and I bought this cute wall clock from IKEA so I could keep an eye on the time while I was there. The trouble is that I can’t read this clock in the dark. I don’t want an alarm clock that just has the regular glowing lights, a) because glowing lights annoy me in my sleep b) there are very few outlets in LongJohn’s room and there’s no convenient place to plug one in, and c) I wanted something a bit more subtle that wouldn’t mess with my night vision should I choose not to get up and turn on the light.
So I thought, what if I bought some glow-in-the-dark paint and made some modifications?
The nice thing about most IKEA things is that they can be hacked and it was simple to undo the springs at the back and take the crystal off.
Then I went to town with my paint. Followed the instructions and everything.
I think it’s quite spiffy.
When dry it’s a nice darker green.
But it DIDN’T WORK! I’m not expecting this thing to glow all night or anything like that – just something to give me a faint hint of what ungodly hour it is when I wake up in the middle of the night (fortunately these are rapidly getting closer and closer to 7AM but in the interim it’s nice to know, ya know?). But nothing. LongJohn’s room is the brightest in the house during the day but even several hours of direct sunlight did nothing. Is the paint bad? Any other ideas?
In my experience that kind of paint never glows all night. The plastic stars don’t either.. should last a couple of hours if your room’s been lit (main lights) for a while before bedtime. The problem with sunlight charge, is unless you live somewhere with very short sunset-darkness spans (equator) they discharge while you can’t notice it (while it’s getting dark)…
There are clocks with electric lettering that only turns on when you poke it/a button. Alternatively you could try facing the clock to the window and hoping for moonshine…
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Well poop.
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😦
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Try glow in the dark tape! Luminescent tape- Amazon! My husband was a scout and I had a roll from him- it’s army grade and lasts all night.:)
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You could try the radioactive paint they used in the war…. That glows all night for years…. 😉 (I found that out recently and made a mental note to tell you…)
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Bahaha awesome. Perfect for the nursery!
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Exactly! I don’t know why we didn’t think of it earlier…
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I’ve read up lately on glow paint and it works best on light surfaces. It might not show on black clock hands☹️.
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Alas!
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Hmmmm I saw the comment above re: plastic stars… BUT I clearly remember the sticker stars in my bedroom lighting up the ceiling quite well AND I ended painted a glow in the dark sun (ummm what? lol) and I swear that worked too. Only difference was that mine was on a white background and yours is on a black one. Maybe that’s the difference?
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Maybe? It’s also behind glass though I’m not sure that would make a difference.
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🙂 my stars lit up well too – for an hour or so when I turned the lights off… If I got up in the night they’d have stopped glowing…. If yours glowed all night then I’m jealous and want to know where you got them from! 🙂
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A tiny clip on LED?
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I thought about that, but then wouldn’t the battery interfere with the working of the clock because it would be much bigger?
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Depends on the LED. If you can make it point down, or up, maybe it can go on the rim? It’s not very much a do it yourself tho.
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True. Alas.
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