question about colors of home theater for optimal video

JakeMcM · 04-27-2003, 07:29 PM

I have come to the understanding that I should probably paint or cover my room. The wall w/my projection screen is covered w/black duventyn that is working quite nicely. now I need to deal with the other walls as they are currenty a light yellow. I understand that the darker the better, like grey, or black etc. But what is not clear to me exactly is where these colors need to be implemented. Should I just paint all the walls/ceiling, one color, or could I say have the side walls/ceiling a dark color, but the back wall a more cosmetic color. I just don't want my room to be a cave but I want the best performance possible without painting the whole thing black. Any ideas/suggestions?

Chris Tsutsui · 04-28-2003, 05:22 AM

Use flat colors so that light and high frequency sound doesn't reflect so much. Dull colors tend to be less distrcting than bright, and try playing with complimentary colors.

I would probably split the wall in half approx 1/3 the way up or 2/3 the way up, and play with different color combinations.

If you use a glossy paint on the upper half, it could help with sound ambience from surrounds, while I would almost always go with a flat color on the lower half.

There are a lot of colors that will perform close to dark gray/black that can give a nice warm or cool feel to the room. Taking a color and adding black will darken it, and if you mix that color with it's compliment the color will dull itself.

Dave Milne · 04-28-2003, 03:31 PM

Chris,
I have always understood that ordinary paint (not textured "acoustical" stuff) has no impact on sound reflection, i.e. flat or gloss makes no difference. Have you seen some data contrary to this?

Jake,
The two objectives of wall color (from a video quality standpoint) are to 1) minimize the amount of light that gets reflected back onto the screen, so as not to wash out the image and 2) keep the color of light that gets reflected back onto the screen as neutral as possible, so as not to color-shift the image.

Obviously black satisfies both, but can be too "cave-like". Shades of gray satisfy the latter...the most color-neutral is "Kodak 18% gray".

JakeMcM · 04-28-2003, 04:23 PM

Thanks for the help



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