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newbie making a diy screen..need guidance on painting it with gesso. (1 Viewer)

mandoman

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Rick
New to the forum so be gentle. I am converting a game room to ahome theater room. The room is 18'x15'-6"x10' hi and the rear and one adjacent wall is sliding glass doors. I will be installing Coolaroo full coverage fabric shades over the doors. The walls are a dark barn red and the 10' high ceiling is white. I am building my screen from BOC and need to know if I should paint it with only matte white gesso or should I use other pigment with it to achieve a more gray finish? My projector is a Viewsonic Pro8200 which I realize will not have the best blacks so would a slight gray finish help with that? Thanks in advance any replies.
 

Jim Mcc

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Yes. I would use a light gray paint. The white ceilings are a HUGE problem when using a projector. I suggest painting it flat black.
 
K

Kevin Collins

You also might want to check out this thread.
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/t/187165/is-projector-screen-paint-worth-it
I would NOT just use regular paint. I would try to get paint that won't change the color of the picture. There are some that claim not to do it out there, but I have yet to actually run test patterns on them with a colorimeter to verify that they are not altering the color.
Also, are you painting your entire wall for a screen? There are not many projectors that have enough light output to adequately light that size of screen, let alone a wall with paint that will probably have a negative gain. You really want to have 17' fl of light coming back at your from a 100 IRE pattern. If you are not hitting that, the least of your worries will be black levels.
There are few consumer projectors that can illuminate a 10' wide screen that even has a 1.3 gain to it.
Depending on how much you are going to paint for your screen, getting gray paint could be a bad decision for you.
If you have a friend that has a light meter (i.e. a Minolta LS-100) then you can measure light reflection from swaths of a variety of different paints that you put on the wall. Make the image the size of the screen that you are looking for and then make sure that the paint swaths are next to each other in the middle and take a light reading. If you are over 15fl of light, then go with the paint that gets you there. However, I think you are going to need to go with paint that has a gain to it. That introduces problems on its own with hot spotting and color shifting.
At any rate, I don't have enough information from this thread to really give you concrete answers.
 

mandoman

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Rick
Sorry if I confused anyone...my screen will be a 100" dia with a 16:9 ratio. I will take the suggestion to paint the ceiling black. Does anyone have a "recipe" for what other tints I should add to the white gesso to achieve a light gray color?
 

mpompey

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Mar 17, 2009
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Michael Pompey
I painted my ceiling a dark charcoal gray, it looks black when the lights are off and really helped with the reflection in the room. And when the lights are on, it goes great with the burgundy and cream of the room. Most things that are done to a room to make it look good visually, usually make it perform worse as a theater. Go ahead and paint that ceiling.
 

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