Help me find pretty colored plastic.

March 10, 2006 9:55 AM

Sourcing colored plexiglass. Where can I buy large sheets of 1/8" or 1/4" plexi in a variety of colors/patterns?

I'm making light fixtures for my basement. Basically, I want to enclose cheap florescent lights in a nice wooden box and use colored plexi to change the spectrum of light coming out of the boxes. I've got about 40 feet of strip lighting hung and I need to source the colored plexi. I'm looking for ivory or opalescent translucent (not transparent) plexi. Where can I buy this stuff if large quantities? Bonus for intersting patterns or other artsy looking stuff.

posted by cosmicbandito to Home & Garden (5 answers total)

Try your local glass cutting shop? There's at least 3 in my (smaller) city and the one I've been to had an assortment of demo coloured plexiglass. They mentioned to me they'd have to order it, but if you're not in a rush, there you go.

Do note that it will cost an arm and a leg. A 3' x 1 1/2' sheet of 5 mil plexiglass I had cut cost about $70.
posted by shepd at 10:05 AM on March 10, 2006

McMaster-Carr sells clear, translucent bronze, and translucent gray polycarbonate. in a variety of thickneses. Unfortunately their use a dumbass frames and scripts web design which prevents me from linking directly to the right catalog page. Just select "plastics" on the bottom right of the front page, then "polycarbonate".
posted by Popular Ethics at 10:31 AM on March 10, 2006

Tap Plastics.
posted by cairnish at 11:30 AM on March 10, 2006

You can also buy tubes that fit over the fluorescent bulbs and hold theatrical gels which will let you get a near-infinite selection of colors: see here.
posted by pombe at 12:56 PM on March 10, 2006

Here are the search results for 'plexiglass' on ThomasRegister. The first one looks promising.

You can also get colored flourescent tubes. Or what pombe said.
posted by hydrophonic at 3:21 PM on March 11, 2006