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We are moving into a new house, and my fiance tells me that I can do whatever I want with the HT/music room. My question--what color should it be painted? I am thinking either charcoal gray or black? Should the floor/walls/ceiling all be the same color? Please advise--this will be the first project I address after the big move into the new house, and we are moving on March 2nd.Thank you, fellow loonies!
Follow Ups:
For best results for video, go to a camera store and get a Kodak 18% neutral density gray reference card. Take the card to a paint store and have it color matched. Preferably, they will use a deep base tint which will have more earth tones. Paint the walls in a flat or eggshell finish and the ceiling flat.The 18% neutral density gray will minimize the effects of reflected light on your color perception. The flat or eggshell finish will minimize the amount of reflection from walls and ceiling.
Also, a dark charcoal carpet will enhance the overall effect.
If your system is direct view or rear projection, use a D65 or 6500K backlight behind the monitor. If you have front projection, no additional light should be needed while viewing video.
I personally say charcoal grey. More dignified than the trite and overused black (but that my speakers had a different finish!!). Try seeing what appeals to you and allows you to focus best. It will need to be dark to help prevent refraction interfering with your watching. Charcoal grey is pretty good. You could even go crazy and use a certain amount of tint to have the refractions of that color enhance their percieved brightness, but that is probably a bad idea.
I've recently completed a small HT room and was amazed at what a difference the color scheme makes in improving picture quality.
For what it's worth, I painted the ceiling black (flat, NOT semigloss or gloss which causes TOO much reflection), the walls are a burnt peanut red (flat again!) which is similar to a deep red/maroon. The trim between the ceiling and walls is a gray, and in that case I did use a semigloss. The trim around each of the three windows is the same gray. Light-tight style mini blinds are used and do a pretty good job of blocking any ambient light. Finally, the carpet is a mixed grey/dark grey. Overall this actually improved the picture via front projection onto a 84" diagonal screen.
Now there is very little light reflecting onto the screen and the pixels are less noticeable than before the paint job. Overall, I am extremely pleased with the results. Oh, and by the way, the room looks good in the daylight too, at least according to a couple of female friends... Best of luck to ya !
I am going through the same thing. I am leaning towards a dark, rich burgandy. It will look nice with the lights on but will fade away with the lights off. Good luck
I would recommend that you seek your fiance's advice, if you care to have her join you in the room. Otherwise, your bizarre color scheme will be a sore point - a source of ridicule that will decrease YOUR enjoyment of the room as well.If you are in the slightest bit anal-retentive or neurotic (if you're here at this forum you're either one or the other or most likely both), another reason besides those mentioned above is that black paint will highlight every little flaw in the wall when light hits it (especially if you use semigloss or high gloss paint). If the wall is drywall and tape construction, the darker the color the more likely you WILL see every damn seam in the wall. This is not a good thing. This is one of the main reasons that new homes are delivered painted white or off-white. The builder does NOT want you to pick apart the drywall and plaster work during the final walkthrough. Unless your new home is impeccably constructed using plaster skimcoat by a very skilled tradesman and the paint job is done by an extremely careful painter, I would urge you to reconsider on this point alone even if you don't come to your aesthetic senses.
Charcoal grey or black? I'd go with the black, but either should be fine. Then block ALL light from entering the room (do a daylight test) and get black or charcoal grey carpet and black curtains all the way around the room. Make it another world, another dimension, a room where time means nothing. Please realize that by doing whatever you want to the music/video room, you probably will have much less input in the rest of the house's decore. But remember, it's YOUR room. It will become known to all others as "THE" room. No, wait. That's what they call MY room. Find your own name. Good luck.
Charcoal grey or black - please no. Even if you cannot completely black out the room the wall reflections will be minimal, particularly if you use a matt finish. The killer is light from windows or cracks around doors.So, paint the room a nice relaxing pastel colour which makes people feel warm & relaxed, rather than something which makes them feel they are entering a dungeon! Involve your wife in choosing the colours - women often have much better taste than we inferior males.
John
John,I know you were probably being facetious or patronizing, but I have to register my disagreement with this continuing stereotype of "inferior males" having worse taste than women. For every man's black-walled HT room, there's a woman's living room filled with "shabby chic" garage sale finds spanning 5 or 6 centuries and three or four continents of design influence. For every "menacing", ugly black RPT flanked by oversized black speakers and towering racks of black electronic equipment, there's a kitschy collection of Gone With The Wind collector's plates and "Precious Moments" porcelain figurines.
In the time when men went to work and their wives spent the majority of time at home, the woman could dictate the home environment over only the mildest objections from a disinterested husband. Because, also during this time, the husband chose the car the wife would drive, although he did allow her to have some choice regarding the color. The husband set the budget and gave his wife a grocery allowance. But times have changed. Women are no longer "kept in their place" in this way.
Why shouldn't men "get in touch with their feminine side" and compromise with their spouses on an environment in which BOTH would be comfortable? There was a time when a man who dared to express more than mild interest in the environment in which he was to spend most of his life was "kept in his place" by the fear of having his sexual orientation questioned.
Hmm. Maybe times haven't changed that much...
DaltonLets not get too wound up about gender equality here and let us retain both our sense of humour and sense of perspective.
Obviously taste is not gender specific. However I think you and I were questioning the depressing thought of black & grey in the original post. The suggestion that the lady in question could possibly have better colour discrimination than the male was not meant to be taken too seriously.
In fairness to the original question it must be acknowleged that the thought of black or grey was inspired by technical rather than aethetic motivation, colours that our posts might have helped to assure him are not really necessary so that the most attractive decoration devised by either or both partners can be implimented.
John
Indeed the original post was meant to approach the subject from the technical versus the aesthetic side of things.I have always been under the impression that, especially in a front-projection system, darker colors on the walls/ceiling, do not allow as much light to be reflected back onto the screen, thus coloring the image.
As far as the lady of the house is concerned, she and I agree that we want to paint the room whatever color is most "technically correct." She is not opposed to seeing a black or dark gray room. We also know that our guests would "hang out" in that room simply for the music or movies. They have all become accustomed to seeing odd isolation platforms, gray RPG Profoam on the walls, and various other neurotic audiophile "thingys."
Just as an aside to this whole gender equality issue, we own a large 3,000 square foot house, and we have an agreement--she gets the kitchen, living room, bathrooms, and the master bedroom, and I get the HT/Music room, hobby room, and rec room. Overall a very fair deal, considering that she and I have the same tastes in color/decor schemes.
So, I return to my original question--given that color is not an issue to decor, what color is most "technically correct?"
Thank you very much, gentlemen!
...because it is an audio and VIDEO room, paint it the color of 6500 degrees Kelvin. Don't quote me, but I believe this color is neutral grey. This color is easiest on the eyes when used as a background color in a video environment. Check out a Video Essentials DVD or go to the Video Essentials website for more information. You may also want to check out WidescreenReview magazine or look up information on this subject on their website (www.widescreenreview.com). However, if I were you and could "start from scratch", in MY opinion I'd still go with my first post. Hope this helps in your decision making.
Simple! Black! That will produce the least reflection asuring you that the only light you will see comes from the screen. But I think its worth pointing out most cinema's only go for subdued walls, I see a lot of blue, and some dark red. If the lights are out and there is little or no ambient light in the room, ie coming through windows and under the door and your set isn't parked up along side a pastel wall, I'm sure that the picture will look just fine.Roland
A couple of points. NO decent movie theatre is painted all dead (flat) black. Why should you do this to your home? Aside from the very good points about black showing flaws and being a depressing place to view a movie, you would be better off to check around in theatres to see what they do. The viewing room should invite you in, so do some research on setup.
You missed my point! I only said that it was technically the best colour, which was what the questioner asked, I didn't say I would recommend it! If you read my post again carefully I did quite clearly state that most movie theatres go for a subdued colour. If you want the best colour rendition and to minimze reflections, technically, black it has to be.
Roland
I agree that painting the *entire* room black wouldn't be too cool. However, painting the ceiling a flat black is good because most front projectors mount very close to the ceiling and black reflects very little, thus a better picture.
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