I've been down the painting route several times with various levels of success.

Depending on the type of case, material, surface, exact color, etc.... I have had some good success at keeping the "Retro" look as long as I'm willing to paint the whole case.

In some special cases I've had some limited success in "partial" touch ups as well, but there are tons of variables.

Out of everything "off the shelf" the best spray paint that I've found so far is a specialty "chalked" color from Rustoleum.
(Attached here)

But as always... Be careful and TEST. Mileage may vary.....

That sounds like a good paint to try. Krylon makes a special paint for plastics that might also work well, thought they may not make a soft off white/beige.

Done a couple of household things with Krylon rattle cans and they went on pretty good and came out okay.

What I actually miss is a cheap (own?) brand Walmart had about 7 or 8 years ago, unbelievable coverage and self flattening, by that I mean I painted crap with them and it looked like the factory did it. In particular I did a low effort "winter rims" respray for a relative's car, and only cleaned them, wire brushed them and rattle canned them, and it went on amazing and hid all the minor pits and scratches. They still looked good 2 years later when she wrote it off, best looking wheels on a wreckers flatbed 🤣 Had very limited colors for $3 a can though. Black, white, red, blue, green, yellow or something like that. Might have been "Paint It!" brand.

Read my last post in that thread (tipc). You dom't have to spray anything. You already have to thin the paint if using an airbrush, thin it down to nearly milk consistency, then swab it on with a disposable foam brush. This works very well on metals with oil based paints like Rustoleum. But it's glossy as all hell. Haven't tried it with acrylics of any sort. Or latex for that matter. Latex is plenty durable. I'm sitting on over 1500$ of high quality artist acrylics, fluids and "heavy body" (tube paint), and am getting to the point where I'll actually try it 😳

I don't recommend rattle cans, even though I like Rustoleum. Krylon is watery and doesn't last like the big R. They do sell matte (flat) and satin finish in rattle cans. But if you go the extra mile you can blend colors to yoir heart's content with lidded cans. Blending colors takes patience and skill though. You can experiment with craft paints, but they vary enormously in quality, some are horrible and don't take thinning at all. Some aren't so bad. The absolute very best that I've seen are Delta Ceramcoat. Or you can get better quality Novacolor or Golden Soflats. Both are fluids. You can sometimes find a basic Soflat on eBay for under 30$.

Avoid Testors acrylics. It's actually unbelievable, but they're made by Rustoleum for Testors, 2 old reputable companies. But they suck in terms of coverage. I watched this dumpkopf on YouTube and nearly soiled myself ordering 2 sets from Menards (and it had to be shipped, ain't got Menards around here). It's garbage paint. The colors look nice, especially on the glossy "swatch" they stick to the package. But very disappointing.

It is something I'm looking into for some of my stuff. For "generic" AT(X) case frontplates, any suitable beige or off-white color would do, though matching it to the painted metal shell is still best. Cases with raised or lowered lettering are the easiest as they won't lose it under the paint, provided you don't paint it too thick (but painting it that thick would make it look like crap anyway).

I do want to check out the options for printed lettering, maybe something like water-slide decals would work, and would be able to be coated over for protection. That could potentially make it viable for certain CRT monitors with some printed decals that aren't too complex to recreate. But first, I'd really want to set up a good paint booth of sorts, and get a bunch of practice in first!

DIY waterslide goes like:

Get some paper that has the adhesive that you wet to activate, lick and stick, like stamps used to be. Put a couple of coats of clear lacquer on it, cellulose based was the go to, shellac maybe also... print what you want on top of this, with a water-fast ink, some ink/bubble jets will run, put two coats of lacquer on top of this... cut it out, float off in a bowl of barely warm water and apply.

I've painted one of my cases in white. Mostly due to big scratches, bumps and rust strains.

It can give good results, but needs patience. Several layers of spray paint. Proper drying between layers. Masking the feature you don't want to be painted. Honestly I'm not good at spray painting but it was the last resort for this computer case. As period correct cases are hard to find, i didn't wanted to send it to trash.

The picture kind of exaggerate the paint defects and it looks better in daylight.

The power button is not the original one. This is why it looks weird.

I consider this as a moderately bad result and you should be able to have better results

My painting experience 😀

The 486 I brought a while ago... I was looking at the ad thinking like... hmm, it did not yellow... Or the seller did actually retrobright it... I look clean... Buy...

2 days later... Oh noooo, it's paint... How i'm supposed to remove that now...

The paint color do match the original color (that I can confirm when I look inside the computer) but there some place that are not painted...

Rav wrote on 2023-08-08, 20:34:

The 486 I brought a while ago... I was looking at the ad thinking like... hmm, it did not yellow... Or the seller did actually retrobright it... I look clean... Buy...

2 days later... Oh noooo, it's paint... How i'm supposed to remove that now... IMG_20230124_163335.jpg

The paint color do match the original color (that I can confirm when I look inside the computer) but there some place that are not painted...

If it looks good as-is I'd roll with it the way it is.....