Home studio Paint choices

[mikesd]

I'm getting ready to repaint my home studio and was looking for good choices for a color that would work well and not interfere with lighting. Also is gloss or flat paint the best way to go. The room is painted paneling. Thanks for the help.

[robertwgross]

Technically speaking, flat black would work best. Of course, you will end up with a pretty dreary room. Flat black should give you zero reflections and zero color cast.

---Bob Gross---

[mikesd]

Thanks Bob, your suggestion is not far off from my initial thought of a darker flat gray.

[Jon]

Someone once suggested painting a studio 18% grey; it'd certainly make finding the exposure easier ;{)#

[cricket]

My studio walls are grey. I have never had a light or color problem!

[mikesd]

Thank you everyone, looks like flat gray is the way I will go.

[GenEOS]

From about.com:
Walls and Ceilings

If you have the space for a purpose built studio, the interior walls are often painted black, although it can be useful to have one white wall. The black walls prevent light bouncing from them and altering your lighting setup. A white wall can be useful when a large plain background is needed, and by using background lighting can be made anything from white to a fairly dark grey. For normal use the white wall would be behind the camera and have little effect on the scene you are shooting.

You may also want to have other white walls with dark curtains that can be drawn across if necessary when the room is in use as a studio. Painting the walls a mid grey colour is almost as good so far as preventing light spill is concerned, but avoid coloured walls that will reflect coloured light to produce strange casts in your pictures.

A black ceiling is often recommended also. I'd only consider this in special circumstances, perhaps if the ceiling were rather low. A black ceiling is just too depressing for both the photographer and the clients. I prefer a white ceiling because I often want to bounce a flash from it; as the best and cheapest way to get a really large light source in a studio. Avoid colours other than white that will add a colour cast to your work.

If you are going to use a part of the studio for processing facilities, as a reception area, a changing area or for your computer equipment etc, you will also want to have blinds to screen these areas off from the main shooting area.

From Sports Shooter.com:
check out: http://www.sportsshooter.com/message_display.html?tid=2740

I would trust Robert Seale's opinions, he's a pretty darned good shooter.

[mikesd]

Thanks for the info Daniel, I think I am going to go with the darkest flat gray I can find since its alot easier telling the wife I'm painting gray rather than black. My ceiling is already white so I stay with that for the time being.

[iwatkins]

Mike,

Also note that technically, some grays are not actually gray and will give a slight colour cast. I don't know if you would notice or not as it isn't something I have tried.

Some of the big paint makers produce grays that are properly gray, i.e. don't produce colour casts. IIRC they are used for home cinemas for painting a wall to become the actual screen. I can't for the life of me remember the name of this range though, sorry.

Cheers

Ian