Orange Darkroom Walls, Why not?

[Tin Can]

The orange paint guy started this thread in 2008.

However, my Dr just prescribed a med that will turn ME ORANGE!

I can't wait...

Hi All,

I am new to this forum and have been extremely impressed by the wisdom and generosity of the participants.

After piddling with large format photography for many years occasionally trying to process film and prints in the unplumbed "dark space" of my dusty unfinished basement, I have finally taken the plunge and am building a darkroom. A major inspiration for this move was finding an 8x10 Elwood enlarger in very good shape available nearby for little more than the scrap cost of the cast iron. There will also be an Omega D2 for printing medium format and 4x5 negs. Accordingly the darkroom is relatively large, 10 x 17 feet.

I have gone back and forth on the question of black walls vs. white walls and was about to compromise on painting the dry side and short walls black, and the wet side white. Then it occurred to me that I could have the best of both if I made all of the walls a safe orange. I figure that white light spilling out of the enlarger will be substantially filtered to only orange by the orange walls. I cannot find anything on this idea and so I am looking for the collective wisdom of the group.

The greatest drawback that I am able to think of, is that the orange walls might be pretty disturbing with the white lights on. On the other hand, what do I really need white room lights for? I plan to include white work lights for the print inspection and negative filing spaces.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Alan Duncanson

[Drew Wiley]

Randy, believe me, I've seen that very scenario many many times, and frankly got paid good money to advise how to un-do the messes caused by it; and it's a helluva lot harder and more expensive to remove than to put on to begin with. I've also thinned and applied hundreds of gallons of oil at a time for exterior use, and it's not only a terribly archaic way to do things now, but never was a realistic solution for indoor use. I've tested thousands of products over the years and dealt with many manufacturers - 80% of them are snake oil outfits. Sadly, the only two people in Nor Cal who were truly atop this game are both
now retired - one being me. I've seen multimillion-dollar homes get condemned due to snake-oil oil advice, entire door companies go bankrupt over one bad
product experiment, and many many fires, which would be the biggest concern in your case. There must be some legit source for decent quality floor finishes
in your general area. But avoid big home centers like the plague; they rarely carry good products and even more rarely provide competent advice.

[Tin Can]

Drew that’s so discouraging I may not do anything to the floor.

I DIY every possible thing I can. I don’t believe in experts.

I am never upset if I fail. Usually. I got paid well to try things. I test everything for myself.

I simply start again.

But time is not on our side any more...

[Drew Wiley]

Well, fire hazard could cut that remaining time a lot shorter, so don't take chances. Experts are actually rare, and they do their own testing too. Marketing types are generally career bullshitters. But most products nowadays require more transparent labeling and an MSDS presence. The failure to convey the reality of such things has caused a lot of people to not even reach middle age. These things contain chemicals; some can spontaneously combust, some can outright blow up, and some rot lungs and brains. Seen it all, not to mention all the cases of lead, cadmium, and mercury poisoning by formerly macho types. I know of a single product line previously sold at my former employer (which I did not endorse) starting almost 30 fires in a single season, plus gosh knows how many fires due to other local dealers. I saw with my own eyes almost an entire block of commercial development go down due to a wood finish oil fire just a couple years ago, ironically just two days after the owner of that particular wood furniture company told me he only wanted dummy help so he didn't have to pay them much. Now he's out of business. Warnings were on the cans, but people obviously don't realize just how much more volatile certain things are. Nor do they listen. Something analogous probably caused all the recent fire damage in the main store of the company I worked for, which is still not fully remodeled and might amount to fifteen or twenty million in lost sales already. I would have raised hell if I saw an oily brush or rag laying around. Inventory loss was covered by the insurance company. But anything that requires significant thinning to use would be downright illegal in many states, including this one. That era ended nearly fifty years ago, thank goodness, and should instantly raise a red flag.

[Drew Wiley]

Well, I was treated pretty good when I retired, though health coverage ended - no big deal for me because I have Medicare, but had to now buy my younger wife health insurance on the state system, fortunately the best run public plan in the country, and still backed by the same local provider. She has a pretty good income, but like many small medical clinics, they have no medical plan themselves. When I started at my last run of employment of nearly 40 years earlier, it was surrounded by paint and chemical factories. Now all the surrounding real estate is either big biotech and pharmaceutical, or sometimes even secret tech (common in the Bay Area due to the marriage of tech and defense or surveillance or trade secret whatever - giant roving carnivorous plants for all I know!) Saw a lot of big buildings blow up over the years, knew people who got vaporized or more slowly killed. Knew of the entire staff of one big company dying prematurely from cancer due to a "harmless" wood treatment product now illegal to make anywhere in the civilized world. Our own longest standing employee there began as a UC student, moonlighted there the whole time despite being worth millions - he commuted on the same bicycle he acquired as a student seventy years before and dudn't even know how to drive, and was finally hit by a car on that same bike a year and half ago. In the meantime, at the University he basically invented the entire class of defoliants now identified with Agent Orange and Round-Up. He had to be treated for all kinds of weird cancers over the years, including Hodgkins. And right now, a big class action suit is underway in SF for the same kinds of diseases being attributed to Round Up. I never did trust any of that stuff. And I never allowed true industrial paints or colorants to be sold there. We tried hiring a few people from that kind of background but they all went bonko just like glue-sniffers due to previous toluene exposure - one minute they'd be smiling and normal and then the next minute slug someone without even knowing why. Sorry you got cut off at the pass prematurely. I don't want to start a political debate, but it is harder to get away with age discrimination here than in states with less enforced "regulations". But the place I worked actually placed a premium on older more experienced workers. And if someone was a good worker but became injured or too old for hard physical labor, they'd retrain them for an indoor position.

[Tin Can]

Drew,

I really appreciate your skill as a writer and storyteller. You always have good grammar with a rare typo. The subject matter seems believable. You can type very quickly.

Last night in reply I went overboard, while all I deleted was true as i recall, it was unnecessary.

In future I plan to avoid zero sum games with you.

Have fun, I am trying to!

[Drew Wiley]

Yes Randy, you have fun too. But the whole title of this thread leaves me a bit queasy. Back in the 70's there was an interior decor fad of painting walls bright orange. A true "Chinese Red" is very expensive to tint and doesn't cover well using machine colorants. But it can be easily made by mixing factory-ground deep red enamel with deep orange industrial enamel. A particularly obnoxious middle-aged lady customer left the store with four gallons of each, understanding she was to mix them equally. She returned two days later saying the wall color came out perfectly, but asking how to get the remaining paint out of the bathtub, which she mixed it in.

[Tin Can]

LOL

New Bathtub!

[MrFujicaman]

Randy, when I had this 1920's built house remodeled about 8 years ago, I wanted to get rid of carpet. You can never really get carpet clean from what I've seen. I finally settled on "Allure" vinyal (sp) flooring from Home Depot. It comes in 36" strips about 6" wide and goes together with mating glued male/female strips. I don't know what that glue is, but we found out that if you mate the two strips and tap them with a rubber mallet, after 15 minutes, two grown men can't pull them apart.

It's easy to work with, affordable and comes in a bunch of "wood" finishes and a tile looking style also-and if you special order it-fake diamond plate! If you do get it-use a WHITE rubber mallet to tap the glue strips. It's downfall is black marks from certain shoe soles.


Drew-try getting black hair dye out of ceramic tile sometime! The GF in college got some on the tiles in her shower and nothing we could find would remove it.

[Liquid Artist]

My present darkroom is in a large unfinished metal Quonset Hut with highly reflective bare steel walls.
I have never had any fogging. I probably would if the walls where closer, but at over 10' away they seem fine.