How To Spray Paint Outdoor Lights

Wow, my first post!  I am so excited.  I have been wanting to start a DYI blog for a while, but kept putting it of.  This weekend, I was outside spray painting my outdoor lights and I was taking pictures of each step.  My lovely husband asked what I was doing (I'm sure our neighbors were wondering as well).  I explained to him that each project I work on, I take pictures.. so when I eventually do my blog, I can add all of those topics.  So here I am!  Let's get to it!

How to Spray Paint Outdoor Lights

Step 1 - Clean your light!  Very important, you want to have a clean surface so that the paint can properly adhere.

Step 2 - Prep the area - Turn off the power at the breaker box to your light, we don't need any unexpected shocks out of this project.  Then it's time to tape everything off.  Since I could not remove the brass beauty from the stone on our house, I had to simply tape off the glass and protect the stone from any splatter paint.  You can see here where I attempted to use some brown craft paper to protect the glass and tape around it.  That ended up being A LOT OF WORK.  So for the other sides, I just used the painter's tape on the whole piece of glass.

Step 3:  Protect the surroundings.  I tucked brown craft paper under the brass plate that is on the stone.  Then just secured it with the tape.  I won't lie, it blew off a couple of times and some choice words were said.  But it worked out in the end!  Oh for the bottom of the light I just shoved some paper towels and brown craft paper in there and even left the light bulb in.

Step 4:  I decided to take this lovely brassy light to a nice oil rubbed bronze.  I used Rustoleum Paint and Primer Spray Paint.  I love this stuff.  I used a primer on another light before I painted it so we'll see which holds up best.  It's best to do very light sprays to avoid the dreaded drip... you can always add more layers.

I let this dry for about 30 minutes then removed the tape and paper.  I learned a lesson the hard way when I let another light sit overnight... it was terrible to get off!

Here is an up-close look at the light all cleaned up!  LOVE!

I also did my front porch light, every light around our house was brass... what was the builder thinking!

 Have you tried spray painting lights?  It's the easiest thing in the world to do, it took me about 30 minutes to tape it off and prep and about 60 seconds to paint.  Totally worth it!