If you’re planning to base your media room around a projector, then I believe the single most important choice you can make is to pick the right kind of paint finish. Why? It comes from the fact that a human eye’s ability to resolve the details in a picture is based on the relative light levels in that picture versus the overall surrounding environment — I’m not talking about the contrast in the picture itself, but between the picture and other light in your room. Your eye can best resolve the detail in the picture when the darkest parts of the picture aren’t much darker than the overall light level of everything your eye can see, i.e. the light level in your room. You can easily see this effect yourself by going into any theater store and looking at a projector picture in a dark room (looks nice) versus in a room with lights on (looks duller and more washed out.) This is exactly why public movie theaters are dark.
So how does the paint finish matter then? Any sort of glossy finish is highly reflective of light. Which means that light, originally coming off your projector screen or any other source (lamp, window, doorway, etc.,) is reflecting off the wall and into your eye from multiple directions, even if the original light source is not in your direct eyesight. This light bouncing off the ceiling and walls reduces the effective contrast in your projector picture. The best way to minimize this is to minimize the opportunities for light to reflect, which means picking a flat finish for your paint – both for the ceiling and the walls.
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