If you wish to optionally paint your flag for better daytime viewing, the following instructions provide suggested painting instructions.

To paint your sign you will need the following items:
* Red plastic paint (Krylon Fusion or similar)
* Blue plastic paint (Krylon Fusion or similar)
* Isopropyl Alcohol for cleaning
* 1" and 3" painters masking tape

Start by cleaning your sign with the isopropyl alcohol - this will remove any oil or dirt that will prevent the paint, tape or vinyl from properly adhering to the coro. Some paints may also recommend lightly sanding the surface to promote paint adhesion, check the instructions supplied with your paint.

Both the smaller (24"x37") and the larger (75"x48") flags are both painted and assembled using the same method with only the spacing of the rows varying. On both flags types, there will be larger holes which are 3/16" in diameter and smaller holes which are 1/8" in diameter. The larger holes are for the lights and the smaller holes are index marks for painting.

Start your painting with the "field" which is the blue background in the upper left corner of the flag. As the coro is white, you will be painting the background blue to get white stars. Included with your flag will be a sheet of vinyl stars that are used as a mask to block the blue paint from covering where you want the stars to go. We include more than 50 stars incase an error occurs with placement. Start by removing a single star from the sheet and then locating the small 1/8" holes in the flag field. Place the center of the star directly over the smaller 1/8" hole - on the larger flag the vinyl stars' points will cover five light holes and on the smaller flag, the vinyl star will cover two holes. Press down on each star to ensure that it is well adhered to the surface of the coro to ensure a clean paint line. When you are completed, count the stars to make sure you have a total of 50.

Next you will need to mask off the border of your flag - you will be able to locate the border by the four 1/8" holes around the outer four corners of your flag. Tape between the small 1/8" holes on each of the corners, covering the outer most rows of 3/16" holes all the way to the outer edges of the flag - see the photo for details.

Now that the border is covered, you will need to mask off the field of the flag which will be painted blue. Place paper or some other material to cover up the portion of the flag that contains the stripes and then leave a tape line between the 1/8" holes that indicate the edges of the field. You should now only see the coro in the background field of the flag that will be painted blue. Now paint the field blue with your "plastic" paint. Once the paint has tacked up but not completely dry, carefully remove each of the stars and then followed by the covering over the striped portion of the flag. Allow the blue field to completely dry for 1-2 days before proceeding with the painting of the stripes. Do not remove the tape around the border of the flag as this will be necessary for the next step.

You are now ready to start painting the red stripes onto the flag. The American flag starts with a red strip at the bottom most layer of the flag - so, start by taping off the second, fourth, sixth, etc layer of the bulbs as indicated by the 1/8" holes along the edge of the sign. For the larger flag, there will be three rows of bulbs, for the smaller flag there will be two rows of bulbs per strip.

After each of the white strips has been covered, you will then need to cover the previously blue painted field so it will not receive over spray. For the smaller flag, two sheets of 8x11 paper work well.

You are now ready to install the bulbs in the flag. Both flags are based on 50/100 bulb count strings. Remember that when you assemble the flag that the bulbs will go in the back/reverse side of the flag - so the stars should be to your right when the flag is facing upright. We generally recommend that you star by installing blue lights for the field first, followed by the lights for the stars and then lastly by the stripes starting from the top and working down.

Several tips to observe when assembling your flag:

* Some string vendors do not include exactly 50 or 100 bulbs -so if you notice that you are short or have an extra bulb, first check to make sure no holes or the wrong holes were populated and then count the number of bulbs on your string and replace as needed. It is not normal to have to cut or splice strings - check for errors in the bulbs first. If you only have 100 bulb strings, you can modify them by removing 50 of the bulbs from the string - contact us if you have any questions about how to do this.

* If you have painted your flag, finding the locations for the bulbs is generally easier as you can see the color (blue/red) through the coro from the front side. We still recommend after installing ten or so bulbs to flip over the flag and check to make sure the bulbs are in the correct holes - especially with the field and star bulbs.

* We recommend picking a location for all your plugs to be located. That could be the right, left or middle. By having all plugs in one location, it makes it easier to bind them up into a single cord - see the attached photo.

* On both flags, you will have additional blue bulbs left over from the field. Just wrap these up and attach them to the other bulbs on the back of the flag.

* The outer most ring of lights on the smaller flag is optional - note that when installing the border lights, the frame must be made from 3/4" thick material.

* The larger flag can handle a "2x4" frame with 1.5" of clear around the border. The smaller flag requires either a 1.5" border without the optional border of lights or a 3/4" surround with the border lights installed. We recommend a minimum of 3" of height for the rear frame to provide sufficient clear for the lights when mounted against a wall or when laying on the ground in storage. We recommend using 1/2" staples, spaced at 4" intervals around the edge to attach the coro to the wood border.

The total number of bulbs required for the American flags is as follows: