I am waiting for my first projector to arrive. It's a Sanyo Z5. I just put together my 92'' screen and I'm super excited.

One thing I am concerned about, however, is that I have light yellow walls and a white ceiling in my basement - and I'm not sure how excited my wife will be about painting walls black. The walls are situated such that he screen is at the end of an approximate 5' deep alcove, then the room widens out into a viewing area like this:

----xxxxxxxx screen
----x-------x
----x-------x
xxxx---------xxxx
x----------------x
x----------------x viewing area

(x's are walls - disregard the dashes)

I guess I just need to wait and see how it looks and whether the walls cause the color to wash out (which is, I assume, why light walls are bad).

Can anyone tell me how important dark walls are? I'm not sure how I will even tell whether it is affecting things or not, since I've got nothing to compare it to.

My 92 screen with black felt...my picture looks allot better with the felt around the screen and ceiling..cheers

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/7189/1000002imgxy0.jpg (http://imageshack.us)

I'm in the process of finishing my basement, and I'm watching movies with the drywall primed, and it doesn't bother me one bit.

Thanks guys. I'll let you know how it looks this weekend.

johnpauljones has the right idea. if you can simply make the screen wall dark ( not necessarily black ), and paint a black stripe on the ceiling immediatly above the screen it will help out quite a bit. You should try things out with your room the way it is and see how you like it. You can always do the screen wall / ceiling treatment at a later time to get a better pic.

I installed a system for a neighbour who had light orange walls and white ceiling in a setup similar to yours. While she originally intended to paint the screen wall dark, she's never bothered as she likes the picture the way it is.

If you're shelf mounting your projector on the rear wall, a retro reflective screen can help with light coloured walls as it will attenuate the reflected light from the walls and ceiling. This won't work so well if you have your projector ceiling mounted, as you'll end up lighting up your ceiling.

Jonathan