We are in the final stages of picking paint colors for the basement rec room and home theater. I've been browsing some of the photo gallerys and seem to find a lot of 'brighter' colored carpets and walls (beige/light browns).

Our carpet is a deep red (merlot) and the ceiling will be a dark blue/black. The current walls colors picked are darker reds (certainly not light/bright colors)
Trim (baseboard and cornice/crown moulding) will be an antique bronze.

Is this too much "dark"?
Some of this is design and personal preference

Does it matter in the end when the lights dim down?

My walls and ceiling are a dark sapphire blue and my trim and columns are metallic gold.

I like it. Maybe it's a matter of taste.

We are in the final stages of picking paint colors for the basement rec room and home theater. I've been browsing some of the photo gallerys and seem to find a lot of 'brighter' colored carpets and walls (beige/light browns).

Our carpet is a deep red (merlot) and the ceiling will be a dark blue/black. The current walls colors picked are darker reds (certainly not light/bright colors)
Trim (baseboard and cornice/crown moulding) will be an antique bronze.

Is this too much "dark"?
Some of this is design and personal preference

Does it matter in the end when the lights dim down?

As a general rule, darker is better. Darker colors will reduce the amount of light bouncing around the room, which will allow your projector to produce deeper blacks and will increase your intrascene contrast.

The only exception to this rule might be the screen wall. Conventional wisdom says to make the screen wall back. My experience tells me that to put a true reference black so close to your projected image will reveal the black-level limitations of typical digital projectors. Otherwise, darker is better.

Thanks for the input! After much trepedation, the dark colors went up. I have to say the first few strokes of black on the ceiling had me wondering what the heck I was thinking. Same for the walls. I didn't get much support at Home Depot either. When I was getting the cans of reds made (CIL Drumbeat for the display wall, Rapture for the other 3), the sales folks were all "you know about reds, don't you?". I'm like some sort of outsider... "ummm noooo". But now I understand.... I am initiated. 5 I say FIVE coats of Drumbeat to get the color fully saturated. Yikes!
But I have to say it looks fantastic. No, I take that back. It looks completely Kick A**!

I'll post pics in a couple weeks once its completed (I can't believe its almost done!)

sm

In terms of performance, there is no such thing as too dark. Ideal would be fully absorbant black EVERYWHERE (including your clothing, etc).

Realistically, this is not always aesthetically pleasing, so off-black colors are chosen, etc. But no, there is no such thing as too black, except in that there is such a thing as "ugly" which you may want to avoid. Of course, if you're a purist, who cares about aesthetics?

All Black would have a WAF of 0 . :) She was a little hesitant on the black ceiling and reds for the rest, but now that its coming together, she walks into the room and sez " this really looks good ". Fortunatley we've landed on colours we both like and look good on the walls. I was worried it might end up a re-paint if it all didn't work together quite right.
As it was, the only problem was the ceiling. I started with an black/blue color on the ceiling and re-did it with a straight flat black, which I am much happier with.