Choosing Paint Color

Now that you have a type of finish from the last blog, the next critical decision is to pick a paint color. In general, you want a dark color because it reflects less light and we just went over why that is important, right? But it’s also important to consider the tint of the color. You should avoid extremely vibrant colors like true reds, blues, or greens. This is because there will always be some reflected light of your walls and ceilings, and this will pick up the tint of the paint. Besides reducing the perceptive contrast of the picture on your screen, this light can throw off the color balance as well. I believe there is some evidence that there is a perceptive effect, but I believe the main effect is the reflection back onto the screen itself of the now colored light. This would add a tint to your picture in the direction of the color of your walls.

So, ideally, you should go with neutral dark colors such as browns and grays if not outright black. But not everyone can live with those sort of color schemes, so my final bit advice on color is that if you’re going to go with a color, red is better than blue or green. I believe this because the red colored light reflecting off your walls will scatter less in the air and thus less of it will get to your eyes before it is absorbed by the various surfaces it bounces off of. It’s the same principal that makes the sky blue, and I believe its part of the reason why when you look at the light traveling from your projector to your screen, you see mostly blue, and why a room with a TV on glows blue through the window at night.