Darkroom paint color?

[stradibarrius]

I have finally got the darkroom project to the point I am ready to paint it. I have worked in darkrooms that were black and darkrooms that were a "normal" color like eggshell or off white. I was not able to tell any difference in the the enlargement results. Do you think the color makes a major difference?

[John Layton]

For my current darkroom...I've painted the walls and ceiling area on the "dry" (enlarger) side flat black (very important that its truly flat!) - to absorb any stray enlarger light and/or baseboard light, while the "wet" side is flat white - to help spread and enhance the effects of my safelights, while allowing me to point these lights upwards so that their light can remain indirect.

[Aerial]

If you use a safelight a light color might make it more effective. Or less safe. Only times I've ever noticed a difference is when the enlarger is not designed well and leaks light out of the negative stage. I go with a pleasing color rather than something technically correct.

[bob carnie]

Matt black around the enlargers... nice white in the wet areas..

[John Layton]

....sorry that I did not answer your question about color. While I have not run any experiments - I did make the mistake, a few years back, of painting the inside of my darkroom sink blue - which, turned a rich black under the reddish amber of my safelights, making it really difficult to see anything. I do think the flat black over and around the enlarger bench is worthwhile, and that white over and around the sink enhances the better effects of safelights, so long as they are the "correct" ones for the specific light-sensitive materials that you are using.

I need to channel Fred Picker here (sorry Fred!) and say that to me, the idea of painting a darkroom in any way other than I've mentioned above does not make sense. Any color but white over the wet side would prove increasingly deleterious to safelight effectiveness as you moved from red towards blue on the paint spectrum, and any color but black over the enlarger area would, again going from red to blue on the spectrum, place an increasing amount of risk to your photo paper, unless your enlargers are completely light tight, and even then, a bright image on your easel can reflect around a bit.

I suppose you could paint your entire darkroom to match your safelight color...but then if you decided to change to photosensitive materials for which your current safelight spectra might be dangerous, you'd then need to repaint!

[John Layton]

...and my apologies to Bob and Aerial who posted in the interim while I was lost in thought...

[Mooncreek]

My comments echo John and Bob's; in my larger darkroom the dry side houses several enlargers in a cubicle fashion all painted flat back. The wet side is more of a white satin finish. In the smaller darkroom I used mostly flat black.

[stradibarrius]

Thanks for the info!

[Petzval Paul]

Mine is painted a 'popcorn' yellow which is nice and bright and reflects both my deep red and amber safe lights well. I don't enlarge but if I did, I would go with a very matt black by the machine, too.

[Jim Noel]

I have finally got the darkroom project to the point I am ready to paint it. I have worked in darkrooms that were black and darkrooms that were a "normal" color like eggshell or off white. I was not able to tell any difference in the the enlargement results. Do you think the color makes a major difference?

NO I don't think it makes a difference. Mine is eggshell with flat black behind the enlarger.

[bob carnie]

when I was doing monster enlargments where a horizontal enlarger would move up and down the room .. therefore sometimes the enlarger was completely at the back wall..

these darkrooms were always painted matt black... we tested fine type in rooms where the walls were white , then painted black and there was a difference in type sharpness.

the image itself would not exhibit much difference if at all , but for fine type we were laying down in separate exposures the black darkroom did make a difference.

[Peter De Smidt]

Like others, I use the 'flat black around the enlarger, white elsewhere' method. Whatever method you choose, spend some time making sure that your enlarger leaks as little light as is practical. Even flat black walls will reflect light.

[Jerry Bodine]

Flat black cubicle style around the enlarger. Middle gray everywhere else, because I like the color, and it's never been a problem with visibility moving around the room. When I made a glass negative carrier I found light leaking out of the carrier through the edges of the glass (a refraction thing?), so I made an inexpensive skirt around the head using a black dense fabric to solve the problem.

[Drew Wiley]

Every now and then some little bit of weatherstripping around a door or intake vent will be due for maintenance. Then you've got things like LED controls on timers etc. Black walls minimize the effect of that. The problem with black wall paint is that it is hard to find something which sponges down properly. Too much pigment load. Old-school matte oil-based enamels are no longer available, and I wouldn't want to use them for touch-up anyway, due to the risk of solvent fumes to film and paper itself. It does make a difference. Some films with long scale can get their shadows ruined tray processing in less the a totally dark darkroom. I keep even the timer display below the sink, so the film itself never "sees" it. Those old-school Grablab timers which their bright Mickey Mouse watch hands are verboten in my darkroom. I even use a momentary rubberized footswitch for the safelight, and never actually leave it on. I'm used to this. Color materials are used in total darkness. I've got to repaint the area behind the sink. Way back when I first built the sink room (separate from the film and
enlarging rooms), I stupidly followed AA's book advice to paint it tan to help reflect safelight light. Very bad idea because having brownish light bounced off the
wall into your trays makes it difficult to evaluate subtle nuances of toning with things like selenium and sulphide toners. I'd rather have a light neutral gray paint
behind the sink, and will do so pretty soon.

[Jim Jones]

I'm with John, Bob, and Peter. Also, blackening bright parts of an enlarger sometimes helps. My ancient Omega B22 was a favorite enlarger after stray light leaks were controlled. Bigger enlargers were made right.

[bob carnie]

some times the column that we use to raise and lower the head wears the paint to metal.. this raw white metal can throw reflections that if not aware can drive one crazy until you find the culprit

I therefore have lamp black paint always on hand to take down any enlarger reflections as Jim points out above.

[Drew Wiley]

I keep on hand high-quality black studio velour. This doesn't shed lint and is fairly tough. Strips can be cut to be placed in front of shiny equipment columns etc.
I'm working on my new copy station now. Even reflections from a filter ring or shutter cable can cause problems trying to copy gloss print media due to reflections.
Studio lighting people classify these temporary light control devices as flags. It's easy to use them once you have some basic frames and arms etc. Or you can
mount the velour to a stiffer backing. A piece of this with a hole thru it blacks out the whole copy camera, except for the lens itself. It's held in place by the lens
hood.

[smithdoor]

Some old Kodak books say white it best for safety lights in the darkroom

Dave

[Drew Wiley]

That's because they want the room as bright as possible. Old school. Since I learned color printing prior to black and white, I simply got used to navigating around
the lab in total darkness.

[neil poulsen]

I painted my first dark room a dark gray. Ugh! It was awful.

I selected pleasing colors for the wall and sheet vinyl on the floor for my current black and white darkroom, and it's a much more pleasant place to be. It's worthwhile painting the enlarger area dark to avoid reflections that can be emitted from the enlarger.

Paint colors do make a difference for color darkrooms.

[jp]

Definitely black near the enlarger(s) is good. My darkroom is not big, so I did black all around. Wet area is only 2' from the dry area with me standing in the middle! I have enough red LED safelights on a tracklight, there is no shortage of light where I do or don't want it. For viewing light (such as for test strips), I have a bulb overhead as rooms commonly have, and a LED under-cabinet light over the sink. attached to the shelf for gear and paper.

[Jac@stafford.net]

My darkroom is an unused cistern built in 1894.. I broke out the wall in the basement to access it. It is all stone and concrete, a perfect grey. No problems. I ain't gonna paint it because the walls shed something like 1/64th of an inch a year, so it is like a naturally renewing finish. Grey is okay.

[Richard Wasserman]

My darkroom is satin finish ( for easy cleaning) white with flat black by the enlarger. I want it to be as bright as possible, but still safe for paper—when I develop film with the lights out it doesn't matter what color I used. I find it much more pleasant to work in for long periods of time that way. A darkroom doesn't need to be a dank, dark, cavern.

[Old-N-Feeble]

I always painted the wall(s) immediately around the enlarger flat dark gray or black. Everywhere else is white.

[Gary Beasley]

I hung a perfboard panel behind my enlarger area to permit hanging neg holders and other equipment around the enlarger. The color, a dark brown, cuts most stray light, and if the panel were hung backwards and painted black would be a really good light baffle with the texture of the backside. The rest of my darkroom is white and my safelight is bounced off the ceiling for diffuse indirect illumination. While not that bright the diffuse quality of the safelight fills the shadows and makes it easy to see things dropped on the floor and on the shelves. I also have a spot safelight over the developer tray.

[ac12]

I did semi-gloss white with a white tile floor, to maximize reflecting the safelight. 2 small safelights lit up the entire darkroom, no dark corners to trip on or loose things in. I can't tell you how much more pleasant it was to use that darkroom than the black painted cave at school.
Unfortunately, I did not think to paint around the enlarger FLAT BLACK. Next time I will.

As for darkness. Kill the lights and it was TOTALLY DARK. Dark enough to load film without using a changing bag. :)
So I did not need black paint to counter light leaks, as I had no light leaks.

[angusparker]

Like others, I use the 'flat black around the enlarger, white elsewhere' method. Whatever method you choose, spend some time making sure that your enlarger leaks as little light as is practical. Even flat black walls will reflect light.

Same as me. My light switches are also color coordinated so I don't turn on the wrong ones. Red switch is black when safe lights are on. White ones sort of white.

[William Whitaker]

I painted my first darkroom, a 12x12 ft bedroom, a pleasing off-white eggshell color. I removed the popcorn ceiling texture (water in a spray bottle and a large putty knife) and painted the ceiling bright white for reasons outlined above regarding safelights. My dry side was actually in the middle of the room as it consisted predominantly of a floor-standing Durst 5x7 enlarger, so I didn't have to worry about reflective walls in close proximity to light leaks.

In addition to the good suggestions already offered, I think it's important to point out that a darkroom is a creative space. As such it should be a pleasant room to be in. That means it should have a pleasing color when white lights are on (face it, even though it is a darkroom, the lights are on most of the time you're working in there.) It also means that ventilation should be such that the room air is exchanged at a good rate. And any other headache-inducing qualities should be minimized or mitigated.

The eggshell color was good, too, when it came time to close down the darkroom when I moved. It was one less thing to have to paint prior to listing the house. :)

[jp]

Same as me. My light switches are also color coordinated so I don't turn on the wrong ones. Red switch is black when safe lights are on. White ones sort of white.

A good idea and simpler than my solution to this problem.

(I have the switches operate a pair of DPDT relays and are wired such that if the safelight is on, the white light circuit is open and won't go on. (And vice versa just to be consistent)

[John Kasaian]

NOT pink! For years I used my daughters "Barbie"themed bathroom for my dark room. It didn't do anything for my prints one way or the other, but it sure was depressing.

[Alan Gales]

In a time long, long ago when I was young and still living with my parents, my basement room was my darkroom. I had 3 white walls, one brown paneled wall, white drop ceiling and green commercial tile floor. My wet area had light pink walls. It all worked fine.

My choice would have been flat black around the enlarger and white walls in my wet area but of course it wasn't my house.

[cowanw]

Assuming a paint colour the same as your safelight, say red for argument, reflects only that wavelength of light; then that would be a better colour than black around the enlarger. Any reflection from the black would be all wavelengths.
I suspect the first assumption is likely not true though.
Any one know about paint wavelength reflection?

[Willie]

Feng Shui for the darkroom?

[bob carnie]

yes absolutely paint it black above I do this with all the stations

FYI, Kodak now recommends a light tan or buff color for darkroom walls. I once had a darkroom that was canary yellow. Nearly drove me insane to work in there with the lights on. I am building a new one now and plan on a light tan color since I hate plain white walls. Anyone paint the ceiling above the enlarger black? I am considering it.

[mike rosenlof]

My B/W darkroom is pale yellow. Even around the enlarger. Light spill from my Saunders 4x5 is low. There's always scatter from the easel itself which in theory could reflect off walls and come back to the print. But I can get good whites, so I've never worried about it. The yellow walls would remove a bit of blue from that scatter, but really not very much.

I guess we could run a variant of the safelight test for a light scatter around the enlarger test. Expose a sheet of paper for middle gray. Put a coin on the paper and hold a dodging tool above the coin so its shadow covers an area larger than the coin. Don't blow it and let direct light near the coin! :) Expose the rest of the sheet for full black. Develop. If you can see the coin shape, you've got exposure from scatter.

[Drew Wiley]

Fung Shui is probably how the Brits got the wrong idea about film sizing to begin with. Somebody probably came back from Hong Kong, where they were told that
to have good luck it had to be 10X8, and not 8x10.

[cowanw]

According to Google's adwords keyword tool, approximately one out of every 125 Internet searchers mistakenly type in the term fung shway instead of feng shui.

[Drew Wiley]

Sounds like Kodak never heard of printing color paper. But I already gave a good reason for not using it at a toning station. And I at least capitalized Feng Shui.
Spellings differ. One thing I have learned is to never have a bedroom window toward the north. That's bad luck, cause there's a tree on the north side of the house,
and the cat always wakes me up jumping on the windowsill too early in the morning so he sit there bird watching. If I had studied Feng Shui, I would have known
that in advance.

[Daniel Stone]

A friend of mine was re-doing his darkroom a few years back, and was trying to find a textured paint, one that was extremely flat, as to not reflect any light, but also relatively inexpensive. I suggested to him that he purchase standard "flat" black paint from Home Depot, and we grind up some charcoal briquettes and mix that into the paint itself. I cannot remember the exact ratio of paint to charcoal, but we were able to make it work very well. We used an old blender he purchased from a thrift store, to both powderize the briquettes, and mix the resulting charcoal dust/crumbles into the paint. We messed with various ratios, but finally found one that allowed for enough "texture", but not enough to lengthen drying time by a noticeable margin. Multiple coats resulted in a VERY textured surface, which was highly irregular and when given the final test, we ended up painting the walls surrounding the enlarger/exposure area(he also contact prints with a similar setup to Weston) as well, not just the ceiling. The enlarger column got a coating as well, except of course in all areas that gearing/sliding would occur.

I will be doing the same procedure when I finally have a permanent, long-term space to call a darkroom. Just as long as charcoal briquettes aren't deemed "environmentally hazardous" :p

-Dan

[Drew Wiley]

Apparently you don't.

[John Olsen]

I prefer a plain white darkroom. That way my safelight illumination bounces around fairly uniformly. Also, back when I was doing color prints I didn't want to have color cast from the walls interfering with judging my prints. Grey walls would work too, but then I think the safelights might have to be stronger, possibly causing other problems with fogging. Good luck with your new darkroom.

[Ginette]

As my walls are some kind of varnished wall panels, I don't wish to paint. I found a dozen of black bed sheets on ebay (very low cost) and wish to install them behind and over the enlargers by simply hang it on 2 clotheslines, along the wall and 3 feet over the ceiling. I also wish to cover the enlargers with theses bed sheets when not in use to prevent dust.
Bed sheets are probably coton/polyester.
Anyone try this?

[Luis-F-S]

Mine's all flat white. I've sealed any light leaks from my enlargers. L

[Drew Wiley]

"Tan" was a Pleistocene notion stuck in the info train from back when people wandered around under orange or red safelights. In color printing one doesn't use
a safelight at all, or when a sodium vapor unit is acceptable, tan paint won't reflect that. I don't give a rat's hoot about where you might have worked, Greg.
You must have had to wander off to a color booth to check the results in any event. And no sensible color booth in the world is tan inside. It's a very very neutral
gray, typically more accurate than a gray card. And yeah, I probably do know a lot of things about color printing the average pro lab never did. They just couldn't routinely afford the effort to go into that level of control unless it was a very expensive process to begin with, like dye transfer. A few of them did have the right
level of clients, but damn few.

[John Layton]

Ginette - I would think twice about the black bed sheet idea...as over time these sheets might tend to rain dust onto your negatives as you load the carriers.

Every so often, I use a flat "swifter-like" (not sure its a swifter, but similar) pad on the end of a handle and gently wipe down my darkroom walls and ceiling. But very gently, so the dust sticks to the pad but the pad does not mar the delicate mat finish of the wall paint. At any rate, to "de-dust" the bedsheets you'd need to remove and wash them - but then again the very nature of fabric is that it will both tend to hold some dust despite this washing, and over time, the fabric itself will begin to degrade and shed its own dust. Make sense? You might also have problems with mildew growth on this fabric if excessive moisture is the norm - although you can generally mitigate this by using a de-humidifier, keeping in mind that its fan will move dust about also. (but if there's anything that I hate more than dust...its mildew!)

Probably the only time I'd consider using black sheets for such an application is if my darkroom ceiling were covered with lots of dust-gathering irregularities (joists, pipes, wires, etc.), and it was too complicated to otherwise seal this off without compromising vertical space above your enlargers.

[Willie]

On controlling dust Ctein had a good solution. One wall with black plastic which attracts dust and can be easily wiped with a damp rag. If you want the static to really attract dust get a wool rag and rub over it a bit and leave the room. When you come back in a half hour or so most of the airborne dust seems to be on the wall.
A good HEPA air filter on a half hour before a printing or developing session works well also.
Controlling humidity will go a long way towards consistent results by eliminating another variable as you work.

[Drew Wiley]

Ha! That's because Ctein's darkroom is his garage and the only thing making it dark is ordinary black poly sheeting draped all over the place. He's quite a duct tape junkie too, or was, because he's moved on almost completely to digital printing now. But he's a good sport about it, and told me he just never got around to making a permanent darkroom. It goes with my old joke about bringing your cat along with you into the darkroom, then rubbing it against sheet rubber so all its fur static will attract the dust. What I actually use in the film room is a true industrial air cleaner which uses multiple septums of copper plates to catch the dust rather
than just filters, then deionizes the clean air on the way back out. These would be very expensive to make today, but I got it free after demolition of an old sound
studio.

[Drew Wiley]

Now back to making a few more enemies, it seems, with the original query ... For a long time, high-end color printing was basically synonymous with dye transfer. That largely involved a whole assembly line of various black and white film materials, some of them ortho or blue sensitive; and only the final rolling of the dyed matrices involved color per se in balanced room light. Color neg printing was more for routine commercial use and Kodak espoused things like color analyzers and even dedicated TV's from previewing the printing positives, though some labs simply used test strips. Nowadays, I would presume most people on this forum use the same sink for toning their prints as for developing them to begin with, and subtle variations and special effects of toning have become popular. Precise color vision is critical to this. When the room lights come one and you've got that bouncing off tan walls or any other conspicuous color, there goes your ability to accurately monitor this kind of thing. I've taught color matching, and if someone showed up wearing amber sunglasses or wanted to work
under a yellow bug light they'd instantly get the boot. Likewise, the last thins someone walking into a shoot and needing to use bounce flash wants to encounter is a colored ceiling. People can do anything they want ... Hire Damien Hirst to paint bright polka-dots all over your walls! But in terms of what people are more
likely to like doing these days, color neutrality is a valuable thing to have anywhere were color vision comes into play. This is an aspect of control that good ole
AA didn't pay much attention to, since he pretty much avoided anything warmtone.

[Ginette]

Ginette - I would think twice about the black bed sheet idea...as over time these sheets might tend to rain dust onto your negatives as you load the carriers.

Every so often, I use a flat "swifter-like" (not sure its a swifter, but similar) pad on the end of a handle and gently wipe down my darkroom walls and ceiling. But very gently, so the dust sticks to the pad but the pad does not mar the delicate mat finish of the wall paint. At any rate, to "de-dust" the bedsheets you'd need to remove and wash them - but then again the very nature of fabric is that it will both tend to hold some dust despite this washing, and over time, the fabric itself will begin to degrade and shed its own dust. Make sense? You might also have problems with mildew growth on this fabric if excessive moisture is the norm - although you can generally mitigate this by using a de-humidifier, keeping in mind that its fan will move dust about also. (but if there's anything that I hate more than dust...its mildew!)

Probably the only time I'd consider using black sheets for such an application is if my darkroom ceiling were covered with lots of dust-gathering irregularities (joists, pipes, wires, etc.), and it was too complicated to otherwise seal this off without compromising vertical space above your enlargers.

Other solution I imagine for my shiny unpaintable walls is Black foamcore.
But no one cover theirs enlargers?

[Jim Jones]

Enlargers can get too hot for covers. Also, covers limit access to the enlarger. A black curtain around three sides of them is one simple & cheap way of reducing stray light. Better yet is stopping most of it from leaving the enlarger. This can be difficult with the long exposures required for dense negatives in some enlargers.

[Ginette]

Enlargers can get too hot for covers. Also, covers limit access to the enlarger. A black curtain around three sides of them is one simple & cheap way of reducing stray light. Better yet is stopping most of it from leaving the enlarger. This can be difficult with the long exposures required for dense negatives in some enlargers.

Yes I had think also about some sort of rolling cage to put around the enlarger in use but finally found that suspend bed sheets on 2 clothlines near the ceiling from side to side of the darkroom will be easier.
By covering, I speak about covering the enlargers when not in use to prevent dust on it.

[Fr. Mark]

Safety Bear here: I'd be worried about hanging up sheets (plastic or cotton) from a fire safety point of view. I have a terrible dust problem in my "darkroom" (it is also the basement equipment room---in the winter the gas fired boiler gives off enough blue light at seemingly random intervals to possibly fog film and printing paper). I've thought about all kinds of solutions, but it is a rented house and fire safety gives me pause, too, when it comes to hanging up plastic to stop the dust infiltration from above (and the sides and the floor or goodness only knows where it all comes from).

[StoneNYC]

From Kodak publication K-4 about safelight testing:

"Consider safelight illumination before you paint a darkroom. Paint ceilings flat white for use with indirect safelights. The walls should be a light color—preferably a color similar to that transmitted by the safelight filters. A neutral color, such as light tan or buff, is suitable in most cases. Paint the wall area immediately behind each enlarger a flat black to avoid reflection of white light from the enlarger onto the paper. Flat black paint is also recommended around light locks to prevent unwanted light from entering darkrooms. An all-black darkroom is best for preventing fog or super-additive exposure in some applications, such as copying and duplicating."

I'm pretty sure they know a thing or two about printing color.

Yup


Why? Because they didn't consult the great Drew Wiley, some guy nobody has heard of aside from a couple online forums? I'll remember to look for the "Drew Wiley Approved" label on my next box of film. I would hate to get something that was made by people that didn't have your input first.

I spent my fair share of time in commercial labs printing critical color without ill effects from light tan walls near the sink and black behind the enlargers.

You Sir, have written one of the best posts I've ever seen on APUG or LFPF! Perfect!

[StoneNYC]

Safety Bear here: I'd be worried about hanging up sheets (plastic or cotton) from a fire safety point of view. I have a terrible dust problem in my "darkroom" (it is also the basement equipment room---in the winter the gas fired boiler gives off enough blue light at seemingly random intervals to possibly fog film and printing paper). I've thought about all kinds of solutions, but it is a rented house and fire safety gives me pause, too, when it comes to hanging up plastic to stop the dust infiltration from above (and the sides and the floor or goodness only knows where it all comes from).

Duveyteen cloth would be ideal, it's designed specifically to be fire retardant and non-light reflective. It's used in the photo and lighting industry for a reason, it's the cloth used most in theater curtains etc because of its fire retardant capabilities so if lights catch on fire the curtains don't burn the place down.

So it would work well as a light preventing backsplash that also isn't prone to catching on fire.

Though painting is easy and so I don't see an issue just painting, but if you're really anti-paint, Duveyteen will work best. Though paint is a lot cheaper than duevy cloth.

[Drew Wiley]

Cloth = lint.

[Daniel Stone]

Duveyteen cloth would be ideal, it's designed specifically to be fire retardant and non-light reflective. It's used in the photo and lighting industry for a reason, it's the cloth used most in theater curtains etc because of its fire retardant capabilities so if lights catch on fire the curtains don't burn the place down.


Duvy is also notorious for holding onto vast amounts of dust, at least every one I've ever used/rented. None of which belongs in a darkroom, which will end up leading to more spotting down the line :rolleyes:

I'm with Drew on this one, just paint and be done with it

[John Olsen]

Safety Bear here: I'd be worried about hanging up sheets (plastic or cotton) from a fire safety point of view. I have a terrible dust problem in my "darkroom" (it is also the basement equipment room---in the winter the gas fired boiler gives off enough blue light at seemingly random intervals to possibly fog film and printing paper). I've thought about all kinds of solutions, but it is a rented house and fire safety gives me pause, too, when it comes to hanging up plastic to stop the dust infiltration from above (and the sides and the floor or goodness only knows where it all comes from).

Gas boiler: I had a water heater that would turn on whenever someone took a shower. Since I couldn't control shower schedules, I made a simple light shield from half of a large coffee can, sprayed it flat black, and fastened it to the heater base. It didn't block the air to the heater flame, but it did a fine job of blocking the flame light. The light baffle can be several inches away from the flame; it just needs to block the straight-line view.
As for light from the enlarger, I've only found problems with light leaks that aim straight downward. Those I block with black tape. I think you would have to have very dense (fully black) negatives to have problems with sideways leaks, even with white walls like I have. Good luck.

[jp]

Since I couldn't control shower schedules,

Yes you can :-)

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