Does everbody have a black ceiling?

I've been in several theaters without black ceilings that looked and showed extremely well. As long as you are able to control the light and your projector is bright enough you should be alright.

You will pay a performance penalty for that white ceiling. The picture can look very good with a white ceiling but don't fool yourself into thinking that you won't be losing some 3D effect and colour vibrancy.

Yes...flat black!

Blue seems to be gaining in popularity. I am leaning towards a blue that will look light night sky when the lights are off. SW Georgian Bay was the color I was thinking of.

I have SW Georgian Bay with black soffits (GOM actually), but am thinking of going fober optic later this year, probably a winter project, so I'll be all black.

http://images112.fotki.com/v589/phot...jpg?1144595000

Bud

We compromised and did a big piece Black GOM and the rest "drizzling mist" from Lowes.



Here is the ceiling piece under construction:



Here you can get a sense of the grey versus white: The DM is on the right:

I have black but I think you need to take in consideration some other factors.

1. How light controlled is the room? Remember, white will reflect any ambient light whereas a dark color will soak it up.

2. How big is your screen as compared to the lumens in your projector? I have a 10 foot wide screen and a 1400 lumen projector and a totally light controlled room and we still don't like any lights on when we are watching a movie. We expecially don't like it when we are playing a xbox game.

3. My wife loves it and has come to appreciate the things we had to do to make the experience more enjoyable. I sat down with her and explained what the different choices meant in regards to long term enjoyability.

Joe

Yes, flat black.

Dark Espresso Brown

We'll be doing our ceiling in Dulux suede effects 'charcoal mist', which despite the name has a hint of blue in it

Agreed, flat black is the way to go if you can convince the wife.
It's what I have in my dedicated theater room.

Part of mine is.

I am currently looking at Milano Blue-that or Georgian Bay.
Depends on who I find first!
Best,
Tom
Chinaclipper

I used Ralph Lauren Gray Suede

"Black Suede" ceilings with "Chianti" soffits.

Sherwin WIlliams Rocky River (a dark green) superpaint flat

This is one of those places that make a distinction between a Dedicated theater and the next forum down, General Home theater, media room.
In the dedicated theater most people will go with Black or very dark, in the general home theater/media/family room applications usually this is harder to do.

It is one of the trade offs you make with a general as opposed to dedicated theater. You can still have decent results though if you are fully light controlled.

How are the results with the dark brown? I am going for a bronze like brown as it will match the dark tan walls and reddish brown of the acoustic panels much better. I also purchased a redish brown set of 45003 Berkline leather seats. Just wondering what kind of performance penalty vs. flat black I will pay with a 106" screen and a 1000 lumen 1080p projector. I have total control of the light in the room as it is a basement with no windows at all. The other option I have is to do the 2' underneath the soffit near the screen in flat black to match the GOM 701 black cloth to the side and bottom to help a bit more and just do the rest of the ceiling which is 6" higher. Appreciate any comments before I make final decisions in a week or so.

Dark brown (you can see the chip below)

My wife was skeptical. I was a little nervous too since this is a dual purpose room like yours, but we took the plunge. Color is a medium gray-brown with some red in it (1002-9C Soft Rabbit Brown flat). 8' smooth ceiling.

We were both amazed at the result. The room looks larger with the dark ceiling! Rather than the feeling of a heavy overhead (that "cave" feeling) that everyone expects, the ceiling seems to disappear. That is helped, though not caused, by recessed lighting - there is no direct light on the ceiling.

What would really make it feel close in the room would be dark walls with dark furnishings. We went quite light on the side and rear walls - a kind of light salmon red (2002-6C Spring Linen eggshell) with cream (7002-4 Foggy Skies satin) trim. IMO the light walls don't interfere at all with the picture, but to be fair we're using a high-ambient technology - LCD rear projection. (The room can easily be made too dark for the picture.) There's good screen contrast since the front wall is a dark red (2002-5A La Fonda Antique Red) that is also used on a rear door as an accent color.

We recommend that you don't go for black in a dual-purpose room. You do want dark colors on the ceiling and viewing wall, but let the overall color plan dictate the exact dark colors that you use. Plan on four colors - main wall color, main ceiling color, trim color, accent color. They should all inter-relate through a base hue. Get with your wife to coordinate the colors. (That should hook her.) Also try to find pictures of well-lit rooms with dark (not black) ceilings for her.

My suggestion is to start with a gray color (use the search engine for kodak gray) and see the difference that has vs white. You can always go darker. From a painting stand point it's tougher to go from light to dark.

Also, for other discussions on this topic...go to advance search, title search only, use black or ceiling in two separate searches and hightlight this forum from the list to the right.

Ron

+1

The lighting design is at least as important to the result as any paint.

Pretty darn close to black,

Had white for a long while and it was horrible and distracting

I can't imagine you'd notice a difference between very dark brown (near black w/o direct light on it) and black. I have had my ceiling a few colors including khaki and definitely see the improvement. I think the actual sheen of the paint is significant. Flat or suede will reduce reflection. Behr has some nice dark browns.

In a darkened room that's true (the brown doesn't even have to be very dark). But in a dual-purpose room the light level is often high. There would be a huge difference between a a dark color that coordinates and one that doesn't. (People claim that black is a 'neutral color' like white, but don't believe it.)

Im amazed the ACLU and NAACP havent flagged this thread title for investigation and lawsuit possibilty given their silliness these days.

Ralph Lauren Thoroughbred - Club Navy RL Number: TH67

Deep blue.

Ditto on the black ceiling making the room look larger. Our black ceiling seems to "disappear" above the dark red soffits.

I was nervous about doing black ceiling, as my basement has low (7'6") ceilings -bu like the posts above it actually made the room feel bigger.