Any interior designer will tell you a splash of colour can really help a room pop, but what if your goal is creating a space that’s boring and entirely forgettable? Instead of reaching for a vibrant shade from Benjamin Moore, just grab a can of this Commodore 64-coloured spray paint that promises to make anything, from walls to cars, soul-crushingly drab and lifeless.
It’s not entirely clear why the personal computers of the ‘80s were always tinted an uninspired shade of brown, grey, or beige. It wasn’t like a barn situation, in that they were almost always painted red because red paint was the cheapest option at the time. But it probably has something to do with the fact that a majority of the personal computers churned out decades ago were destined for offices where they needed to blend in with equally ugly desks, carpeting, and cubicle walls. A bright red desktop computer? Such a distraction would crush productivity, and so everything from Commodores to IBMs to even the original Macintosh came in your choice of drab, drab, or drab.
At $US27 ($37) for a can with just 375 milliliters of actual paint inside, it would cost a small fortune to turn a room into a life-size version of a Commodore 64. But Retrohax.net doesn’t actually sell these spray paints — which are also available in colour-matched versions for the Amiga 500 and the Atari XE/ST — for interior design. They’re for collectors looking to restore vintage computers to their original conditions, and while usually that only requires a good cleaning, sometimes they need a complete facelift to be returned to their former glory.
A layer of primer followed by a coat of the appropriately tinted spray paint and these retro machines should be as good as new — assuming you live in Poland. According to a disclaimer on the Retrohax.net website, “Due to flight restrictions of pressurised materials, shipping ONLY TO POLAND – please contact us if you want to get this product. We are currently working on a new shipping solution.” Even with a last name like Liszewski there’s no chance you’re going to be able to get your hands on this outside of Poland, at least until they start shipping it in other flight-friendly containers.