Bluelight Set

A blue beacon over the crossroads

Eight paints prepared for models of emergency service vehicles. The name of the set refers to the German term for a blue warning light, and the palette follows from that: it consists of the pure, richly opaque signal tones used on real emergency vehicles so that they are visible at a hundred meters even in the rain.

The line-up holds white as the base of modern ambulances, an ivory matching older ambulance vehicles, a sulfur yellow from newer municipal and utility vehicles, an orange typical of recovery and highway services, a fire red known from fire tenders, a mint green from the police cars of an older generation, a traffic blue of technical assistance and a rich blue for beacons and warning features.

This is a range thinned for spraying. The pigment is finely milled, so the paint passes even through a nozzle of around 0.2 mm and leaves a smooth film with no streaks on the large flat areas of a hood or the side of a box body. That is precisely where a brushed finish on emergency vehicles usually gives itself away, because signal shades are very saturated and every brush stroke reads on them.

For the full effect it helps to lay the rich color over a light base and to finish the paintwork with a gloss clear: service vehicles are kept polished and a matte surface would look out of place on them. The set therefore covers both present-day vehicles and older liveries from the 1980s and 1990s.

Modelers of emergency vehicles usually reach for additional decals with lettering and reflective stripes. The base color under them decides how legible they are, so it pays to let the rich shade cure thoroughly before anything goes on top.