Another Studio Question

I hate to be a pain everyone but, I am really new at this & I want to get it right. I have a room I plan to use for my studio and wanted to get some advice on what color the room should be painted. Should I use dark colors or light and, do I use a flat or a gloss finish? I plan to use the room to do portraits. Thanks again.

Bo.

EOSimages wrote in post #2735621
I hate to be a pain everyone but, I am really new at this & I want to get it right. I have a room I plan to use for my studio and wanted to get some advice on what color the room should be painted. Should I use dark colors or light and, do I use a flat or a gloss finish? I plan to use the room to do portraits. Thanks again.

Your choices depend a lot on how you are going to light the portraits. If there's a probability of a lot of stray light (such as with shoot-through umbrellas), you would likely be best with a non-reflective wall surface color and finish. If, however, all your light is well controlled and there is little stray light, you could get away with white.

Having the walls and ceiling painted colors which are NOT neutral (such as red, green, blue, yellow, etc.) is probably a big mistake, as any reflected light will pick up the tint of the wall surfaces. That leaves white through neutral grays to black.

If I were going to build a full-time studio, I would probably have movable black curtains surrounding the subject area (but not in really close) for control of stray light and have the rest be a bit brighter for the sake of people's attitudes about dark areas.

good answer Skip!!

(I wondered the same thing)