Phantom White Nintendo Switch
Modifying the Nintendo Switch's hardshell case.
Originally posted on my personal website on 12/7/2020. This post has been re-edited and moved to Substack.
Here’s my custom Nintendo Switch. It goes from an opaque white to clear, and has white accent buttons. I love how it showcases the internals while still maintaining a strong white accent. It did involve a decent amount of experimentation to achieve due to my lack of experience with the material (had no idea acetone would completely melt the first shell I bought).
This only took about 3-4 days to do, cost way too much money, and completely voided the warranty.
The Phantom Effect
This was inspired by the special edition “Phantom White” Xbox 360 controller which is frosted and fades from white to clear.
I started with a plain, clear hardshell replacement and started sanding the interior down to make it frosted. To achieve the fading white effect, I’d need to airbrush the interior very carefully so the gradients line up. That was trickier than expected and actually led to a catastrophic failure that involved me starting over with a new case. There are two things about this:
It’s really light plastic. The airbrush will literally blow it around while you’re trying to paint it. I had to mount it down.
You need to move up in a consistent stroke, and stop at the exact right place to make sure the fade starts at the same spot on all parts.
Basically I missed up the first time. The white went clear at the wrong place because my stroke went just a bit too far. So, I started cleaning it with acetone. Well, it turns out acetone dissolves this type of plastic, so after about a day of sanding and painting and drying, my Nintendo Switch mod was dissolving. Not good.
So, I bought another case and got started again being far more careful this time. You don’t have to get it in one go, but your margin for error isn’t very high when it has to fade across multiple panels lined up with an air nozzle and your bare hands. I did get it on the second try after learning a bunch of lessons from the first.
It came out pretty great. I also made the back-plate a full opaque white. The interior backside didn’t really look that great anyways, and this looks more cohesive. This turned out pretty nice with the transparent outside looking sort of dewey above the white interior. I’m very happy with it overall. There are a few steps someone motivated could take this further:
Make your own hardshell case with no visible fixtures (notice the grids at the bottom of the controller). They aren’t too bad, but it would definitely look cleaner without them. It would make sanding and painting easier, too.
Hide the PCB, somehow. The interior of the Xbox controller has a cover hiding the PCB, which is probably green. This would make it look even more cohesive, although there’s something nice about seeing the chips too.
I think it was worth voiding the warranty for. I hope you like it. I like it a lot.
