Have you painted your walls black?

E

epgs1

Guest
I am interested to know how many of you have painted your wall/ceiling black or at least a dark colour? I have just installed a projector in an almost dedicated room and would like to darken the magnolia coloured walls and white ceiling, but my dear wife is not too happy about the idea.

How did you persuade your partner to black out your room? Was it though logical reasoning, chocolates, exotic holidays or something else? I need ideas.

Cheers
Graham
 
Graham,
Had to compromise! My room has Terracotta walls which are ok for normal use and are'nt too bad for home cinema with the lights off/ dimmed down.

Dipman
 
my walls and ceiling are dark red and i have painted the coving gold.
my mrs likes it!
 
Very, very difficult in a living room situation to get these kind of colours in. I'm lucky to have my own room which has a black ceiling and grey walls, ideal for HC but I sure as hell wouldn't want my living room in these colours.
 
In a fit of utter, dull, teenage stupidity (as a 17 years old) I painted my bedroom completely matt black. :clown:

Even I had to admit that it was absolutely, unbelievably, excruciatingly awful. It was impossible to read anything whether the curtains were drawn or not. Or whether the lights were on or not. A bat cave is more inviting!

My best advice is simply: don't.

A tasteful mid-green is quite classy... Or curtain the side walls of the room in darker material to be drawn back when not watching fims.

But <NOT> black. Even red looks almost black in low light.

NIMBY
 
I see a red door and and I want it painted black.....


I would love a completely black room for sleeping in, but obviously not for anything else. It must be so peacefull....


I'm currently trying out a paint called Chocolate Suede after seeing someone else's excellent room on this forum.
My bedroom walls are currently gloss white (argh!) I didn't help that the test pot was crap so I'm going to make up my mind after two coats on the test area.

It is very strange going from a very light colour (like white/magnolia) to a rather dark one. Best go for a deep red/blue I think if you've got a wife to keep happy...
 
my living room cinema has a matt black ceiling .I went for the night sky effect .I used big clear plastic gems (like you get in kids rings ) stuck to the black ceiling with blue tack to look like stars. I allso have the same paint on the woodwork of the room but with several coats of satin varnish to give it a slight sheen but not to reflective . The walls are done in gold wallpaper.

I think the ceiling can make a realy big diference when it comes to a projector . there is just so much more contrast .

As for how I got the whife to let me . well I just did is :D
 
Originally posted by Stew
I see a red door and and I want it painted black.....


I would love a completely black room for sleeping in, but obviously not for anything else. It must be so peacefull....


I'm currently trying out a paint called Chocolate Suede after seeing someone else's excellent room on this forum.
My bedroom walls are currently gloss white (argh!) I didn't help that the test pot was crap so I'm going to make up my mind after two coats on the test area.

It is very strange going from a very light colour (like white/magnolia) to a rather dark one. Best go for a deep red/blue I think if you've got a wife to keep happy...

I went for Chocolate Suede (Crown Paints) in my cinema.
It's a lovely deep shade that works well with contrasting lighter colours (and the missus loves it!)

The contrasting Wall (back one) is a colour called "stone" from Homebase

I'm currently in the process of building acoustic panelling in contrasting colours for all walls, I think most women would put up with this if you showed them the aesthetics of the end result


In prog
 
Yeah it was your room I got the idea from :hiya:

How easy is it to get the suede effect? I tried a tester pot last night but it looks awfull, nothing like what you have achieved, mind you that was with the crappy "brush" that comes with the tester.

Anyway, You've done an insanely cool job with your Bunker :cool:
 
I used black carpet on the screen wall (it should be accoustically dead if possible), and grey carpet on the lower walls below ear height. I painted the upper walls and ceiling Dulux 6000n which is the same colour as a Kodak 18% grey card (I tried to match the carpet as best as possible to it). My room suffered friom slap echo, so the carpet kiled it completely.

I know someone who carpet from floor to ceiling and is very happy both with the look and sound. I used thick wallpaper paste to fix the carpet to the walls so it can be removed easily with a steamer later on.

The Kodak grey is usefull to prevent screen reflections from refelcting back off of the walls/ceiling and washing out the image. The grey is neutral so you don't see any obvious colour wash etc.

I have total light control in my room, so wanted the room dark without having a dungeon look. The carpets are red, as is the rear wall, and when lit via 3 halogen downlights, it looks quite warm and cosy, without being overly dull.

Pics on my home page if you're interested.

Gary.
 
Originally posted by Stew
Yeah it was your room I got the idea from :hiya:

How easy is it to get the suede effect? I tried a tester pot last night but it looks awfull, nothing like what you have achieved, mind you that was with the crappy "brush" that comes with the tester.

Anyway, You've done an insanely cool job with your Bunker :cool:

Don't be put off by the test pot Stew, I think you can only get the proper suede effect using a large brush and a very random brush technique... the best way IMO is to give it two (light) coats really ruin a brush doing it. If you brush in one direction it looks awful.

For my size cinema it took 1 and a half 2.5L cans (two coats)
The room is roughly 10 x 13 x 8 high, the rear wall is a light contrasting wall, I'd say plan for two cans in the avereage room.

ps, most of it will be covered up with acoustic panels in my room soon anyway!:suicide:
 
Hi fufna,

I'd be interested in your before and after results of your accoustic paneling. Can you provide any readings at all as a reference, or are you just going by ear?

Also, any pics to show placement etc would be useful too. Are you using the mirror method for placing at first reflection points, or some other way to correct things?

Cheers,

Gary.
 
The technique involves me sitting in the room with Protools running and an Spl meter and various test CD's freq sweeps etc.

I tested the room with the untreated concrete walls and then after drywalling and cavity treatments. To be honest, it wasn't too far from flat below 400hz (apart from a huge 1st order resonance that made the windows pulse at just over 40hz) most of this was sorted by reverting to a single sub and carefully adjusting placement and cavity fillings

It was the high end that worried me... hence the panelling going in.

When I'm happy with the in-room response I'll get some stuff together and post it in a nerdy thread in the future
 
Sounds good. I'm looking forward to your nerdy thread. :)

How does Pro Tools work exactly? I've done a simple sound sweep for my sub using a test CD and SPL so that I could flatten out the sub via a Behringer Feedback Destroyer, but I've yet to see how the rest of the room looks frequency wise.

Is pro Tools more than just a test CD? Does it include a mic hooked up to a pc? I like the idea of an automated tool that plays and records the results all in one go.

Gary.
 
Protools is a professional multitrack hard disk recording system.

It also has some great uses for room calibration and analysis(when you hook up a 2k Neumann mic to it;))
 
When you say a 2K mic, you mean a £2000 mic? :eek:

It sounds like quite an expensive package then?

Gary.
 
Neumann C12, it's a studio mic, incredible response.. not a package, it's just that it works well as a setup tool for room EQ
 
Originally posted by avanzato
Can you measure RT60 times with Protools?

Of course, it's obviously not made to be a calibration/analysis tool, but a TDM (Hardware) system is incredibly powerful (well, at a guess I'd say 75% of the music you listen to has had a protools influence)

There are plenty of plug-ins available for TDM tools, you could even try the free version from Digidesign.com

Not sure of the functionality of this version, but if you use a mic with a decnt response into a good enough card you'll find uses i'm sure.
 
Originally posted by epgs1
I am interested to know how many of you have painted your wall/ceiling black or at least a dark colour?

I've painted all the walls and the ceiling in my HC dark grey and it has made a big improvement on the picture from my Sony pj and for some reason the dark colours actually make the room look bigger than before.
 
I painted my ceiling matt black it always bugged me when I could see reflections when it was white.

Matt black ceiling and front wall and Door
Cuban Red (Dark Red) Walls
 
Originally posted by Sly
my walls and ceiling are dark red and i have painted the coving gold.
my mrs likes it!

The old ABC Cinema colours, pre 1982.
 

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