Ready to have some amazing ground crawling fog effects for the next Halloween party? I bet you want to take it to the next level and create that fog with a cool color!
Well, how easy is it? Can we just add dye? Let’s find out!
You can’t add food coloring to a fog machine. It will damage the smoke machine. Fog machines use fog fluid to produce water droplets that are clear in color. They similarly take the color of the light that is focused on them. Hence they are white in nature. Shine a light of a different color, and you will have that colored fog.
Will Adding Food Coloring In a Fog Machine Make Colored Smoke?
Food coloring is for just that, food. When you are talking about changing the color of smoke it is possible to do, but food coloring will not help.
In fact, it will make things worse. Not only can it ruin your machine, but certain dyes are toxic, and burning them can even worsen things.
Why doesn’t food coloring change the color of smoke?
The reason food coloring doesn’t work is that it has no effect on the smoke itself. When the fog machine heats the fog fluid, you are left with an aerosol vapor in the air.
Fog is small liquid droplets of water in the air that are clear in nature. Fog reflects light; the reason fog appears white is that the lighting in the area is white lights. It will reflect white light.
Adding the food dye to the smoke fluid will ruin fog machines as the food dye will produce solid particles and not create liquid droplets. This will quickly damage the fog machine and still not produce colored fog.
How do you make Colored Fog?
To create the colored particles, you would need to reflect colored lights. You can shine the colored light towards the smoke machine that way.
When it produces the fog, it will be a visible colored fog effect. Even though the fog is still clear, the light will make it appear like colored smoke.
Can you make colored fog with dry ice?
If you wonder if dry ice is the solution to getting your special effects, it will not. Dry ice turns into a gas and then appears white before fading away.
Again, instead of doing this with dry ice, you can still use colored light to change the cloud to blue, green, or whatever you prefer.
I have heard of people taking dry ice and adding it to a container with warm water. Then add soap or detergent and food coloring.
It will then melt and produce colored bubbles as it’s pushed out of the container. The colored bubble will then pop and have some fog inside of it created by the dry ice.
Pretty cool effect from the dry ice. Make sure the container has a small opening to help form the bubbles.
The ice will not last very long, and dry ice loses its effectiveness quickly.
Can fog juice be colored?
As mentioned earlier in this article, you do not want to color the fog juice. This will ruin your machine and still not produce the desired effect.
I also recommend sticking with the juice that your manufacturer recommends for the fog machine you have.
Colored Fog Fluid FAQs
Final Thoughts
Now you understand why it is important to be careful when mixing things that the manufacturer does not recommend. We have a full article about adding color to fog machines with lights and even recommending the best one to get.
I hope you enjoyed the article and learned something new today. Thank you for reading.
Please be careful and use at your own risk
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