Light Blocking Paint / What's best

[Timmy!]

I'm looking to mount 3mm LED as headlights on a Fine Molds Falcon. When I light them on a test basis, the put a noticeable glow in those panels.

I was planning to paint the inside of the panels with black paint to block the light, but was wondering which brand/type of paint would be best (i.e. enamel, acrylic, etc.)

There are some posts about interior painting for lighting, but they are about bouncing the light around inside the model, which I don't want to do. I just want it blocked.

Any thoughts?

[jwrjr]

I'm rather fond of a coat or two of any metallic paint (except for Testors Silver, unless they have improved the ability of that stuff to dry), followed by flat white to cover. If you put acrylic over petroleum based paint you MUST allow the petro paint to dry Thoroughly.

[Sparky]

We just used primer black and or white or some combo of it. I tried the silver paint from the rattle can (rustoleum or some brand) but It didn't do better than white to keep the light diffused and moving around.

To seal it black primer, to help balance the light inside the model white or silver depending on your take.

Your best bet is to primer it up/seal it then do a light test with a mockup of your lighting source, when in doubt baout the final lighting go brighter in your test.

Here you can see seams are your biggest source of light bleed thought he clear saucer was chosen so we could have windows, it gets masked later:
http://www.kc6sye.com/techmages_2_8_04_i.html

Here we had silver thermal blanket mylar in the sconces and still with the light bleed, we used Mr. Surfacer to seal the seams and light leaks:
http://www.kc6sye.com/techmages_4_11_04.html