Fluorescent green

Fluorescent green, a signal green for conspicuous details

A fluorescent green does not belong among the body tones of classic racing cars. It is a signal color that you will meet today on the warning stripes of service vehicles, on the vests of course marshals, on the marking of tow eyes, on the hoods of rally reconnaissance cars and on the accessories of present-day circuit specials. Number Five carries it as the darker green of the fluorescent group; in the same group the brand has a lighter green tone as well, so a modeler can choose how sharp the result is to be.

What sets a fluorescent pigment apart

Fluorescent pigments return part of the light falling on them at a different wavelength. The shade therefore comes across one way in daylight, another way under artificial lighting and another way in a photograph. In a display case it behaves unusually vividly and in pictures it often looks more saturated than you see it by eye. For the same reason signal colors on real cars are short-lived, as in the sun they lose intensity faster than ordinary body paints, which is good to know on a model if you are building a weather-beaten working machine and not a car from a presentation.

Where it is useful

• warning stripes and markings of support and service vehicles
• race numbers and conspicuous surfaces of modern circuit liveries
• protective elements, grab handles and markings on models of utility vehicles
• small accents on a diorama that are meant to draw the eye to one place

What subject the tone follows

A green from this end of the spectrum holds on the circuit with emergency and course vehicles and with the gear that has to be legible even at dusk and in the rain. It is a color given by function and not by the taste of a designer, and its role on a model corresponds to that, that is small, precisely placed surfaces.

It will be reached for by modelers of automobiles and trucks who build present-day subjects and need a tone that cannot be mixed from an ordinary green.