Looking for a great DIY Screen

For specific advice, you need to be sure on the projector.
Do you want to build a screen and/or paint one?
"Cheap" is not specific enough.

Mr G,

These answers are based upon your "most likely choice", the Optoma HD20
(...and not a bad choice at that! )


* How big is your room? Dimensions? 10' x 13'...the projector will throw 12' - 13'
* Where (how far from the screen) will you sit? 9' - 12.5'

I'll take your initial layout to hand...a "length-wise" rectangle.....;
With this being dedicated, and obviously there being no room for two rows of seats, you should place the "Heads" location at 9', and this too will be the location of your Side Surrounds. Place the Center Rears on the Rear Wall at 3' in from each Corner and at 6' up.

Now here is what "I" would do.

Turn the room so the Screen is on one of the "long Walls" giving you a wider layout. That provides a more dispersive Front / Center sound stage. You want some more degree of separation between each Right/Left Main and the Center

Place seating head position at 8'. This should mean the Seats are not flush against the back wall but have about 1' of space. Once again place the Side Surrounds at each side of the seating, or as close to that as you can.

Center surrounds are at 4' in from each corner...same height.

Try to get two small Subs, and place them in opposing corners diagonal to each other. In such a small room, ot is better to create a restrained and even Bass Wave into the center of the room than toss out a heavier bodied wave from one corner. It makes it far easier to blend in LFE effects with the room's overall sound output. The Subs can be much smaller too if you get good little Thumpers.

PJ position;

The furthest the PJ's lens can be is 11'5" with your initial layout and 8.5" with my suggestion. It would be strongly advised to mount the PJ first at the selected location. With the O's lens Offset, at 11.5" the top of the Screen needs to be 7" below a center line through the Lens. That would mean you must...in a 8' tall room, put the center of the Lens approx 6" from the Ceiling. This will call for the use of a very low profile Mount such as the Chief RPA variety, one that comes with a flat, "Projector specific" mounting plate.

Hang it, level it, and square/plumb it with the Screen wall, then shoot a Blue Screen image onto the wall. Use that to check how well you have the PJ posistioned, and make your needed correction at that time.

If your wall itself is looking very smooth....use it. Tape off the perimeter of the Blue Screen, placing the inside edge of the tape just barely outside the blue area. (1")

* How big of a Screen would you like? As big as we can comfortably enjoy...92" seemed like it might good at first guess.

Not bad for my suggestion. For yours you could go out to 98" diagonal easily enough.

Either size of course can be accommodated by using the Drywall, but both can also use a $12.00 sheet of Thrifty White Hardboard that can also be painted with a Roller or Sprayed for exemplary results.

The "O" needs Contrast help so you do want some Gray in the equation. If you want just a bit of good help, go with a N8.5 Neutral Gray w/Poly and Roll 'er on or Spray (....after Priming the Surface on Drywall, the TWH needs no primer...just an initial light dusting of the actual Screen paint...)

A 98" diagonal Screen is just 85" wide, and even if you decide to place the Screen on a Long wall, if your sitting at 8.5' away, that's 102" away....plenty far enough for a 1080p PJ and a Screen that is virtually flawless in surface characteristics.

The close throw and the "O's" muscular luminosity means you can run the lamp on low (22 foot lamberts!) so your Black levels can start out at their best possible level. The Mid tone Gray will deepen the blacks as they are seen on screen, but the wealth of Lumens will help the image's whites stay as white as they can using a Gray with no metallic assistance. It will look great.

Beyond that simple solution you could employ the same shade of Gray but add some White Pearl to the Gray (20% to overall volume) without risking any degree of "speck-u-larity" (graininess)

If you want a "Hang & Shoot" option and your willing to forgo any Contrast boosting from the surface...and you live west of the Rockies, you can use inexpensive Do-able Board "as is' and get a very good image from that white surface.

i did a S-I-L-V-E-R on Thrifty White Board. gain turned out to be about 1.5.
the image was very impressive.

It'll be hard to beat. Out of all the sub $1000.00 1080ps, it's the best by a big majority of opinions


The high resolution helps, but really it will be the small, tight image you'll have. Your nowhere near out beyond the further reaches of the Focal length of the Zoom at 98" let alone 90"-92'.

In the "Wide Room" configuration, your "Screen Width to Seating" ratio would have great immersion....but still be inside the "peripheral" edges, and with the walls being even further to each sides, there will be much greater isolation of any reflective tendencies.

Read that to mean a BLACK room to each side.


One row of seating.....wider Sound stage......perfect Screen.... hard to find something wrong with any of that!



Lets look at it.

If you make a screen 88" diagonal, it would be 42" tall. The Optoma has a 6.7" Image offset, so if you use a 5" mount that attaches directly to the Ceiling, the top of the image would be 12" from the ceiling. Add the screen height to that and you have the bottom of the Screen at 3'-6" (42") off the Floor. (PJ Lens is 9.3" from wall.)

That's high, Bro. I'd be willing to say that under those specs, you'd have no problem going wii in front of the couch/chairs.

Sounds a bit disgusting though........




I love the stuff, especially when I can just stick it on the wall and then mask off and spray it right in place.

But I'll opt for a Smooth Wall every time if I can....and in the case of using a DLP, framing your image ahead of time by mounting the PJ and shooting the image you want is IMHO the only sensible thing to do.

Then again...I suppose that's why I prefer PJs w/lens shift.


Absolutely....and combining darker walls with darker ceilings is a more attractive approach. Using the layout I suggested, your walls (...including the Screen wall...) could be anything between a Mid-Tone Charcoal Gray to Deep Blue/Green. Dark Brown is good to. I'd pick a Color in a Flat shade that is moderately dark, then do the ceiling in a saturated version of that same color that is 4-5 shades darker. It can be a dark Tan to dark Brown...or mid Gray to deep Charcoal....or mid-Gray/Blue to very Deep Blue/Green (lovely)

I like the last best because the wall areas that do receive directed light from spots produce a pleasing effect, but outside that light cone the walls recede to....gone!


Then ya gotta do it right! Explore your lighting potential using directional Eyeball Spots (4"ers) along the Ceiling down the top side walls, and a row of three about 1' in front of the rear wall behind and above the Ceiling.

You can Flood the perimeter with directed spot lighting, yet the Screen wall and Screen will effectively be......isolated in a dark hole.

And should you decide to run the "O" on full lamp....... well, under the lighting as suggested ...on Full, you'll still never have a degraded image.

Now at this time I'd say you should consider a DIY Paint mix that is more advanced but that will work toward giving you only the boosting you need.
One like a N8.5 simple Gray but w/Poly and Pearl, and perhaps subtle addition of some Silver Metallic and that image could jump off the wall 4u.