Topic: Setting up my darkroom, part 1

[Urban Hafner]

Hey everyone,

today we got the keys to our new house! It's also my birthday. In our new house we have a small room in the basement that will be my darkroom. Now, the painter will start painting the house in the next days. For now we said we would do anything to that room. It's going to be dark most of the time anyway. Now I'm wondering if it would make sense to paint it black ... I have no experience with darkrooms so I can't tell if that will be of any benefit or not.

That's it for now. Later on I will need to figure out all the enlarger stuff, but that will have to wait until after the move.

Urban

[SLVR]

well happy birthday then!

[Francois]

Happy Birthday Urban!
And all the best stuff for you this year

As for the darkroom, don't paint it black!
You want a darkroom, not a dungeon!
All darkrooms get painted either white or pale yellow to reflect the safelight. Black walls serve no real purpose since the darkness comes from sealing the holes where external light comes in.

The only thing black in my darkroom is a piece of Bristol type cardboard that I put behind the enlarger to prevent stray light from very lightly fogging the paper. The difference is slight but present.

[tkmedia]

paint it 18% grey!

[mcduff]

We painted our darkroom flat black and it was ridiculous. We wound up putting strips of white tape around it as you felt like you were in a black hole !!! When I do my home darkroom, I have learned :-) Francois Tony, I like the idea of yellow.

[tkmedia]

I'm really not one to say, sadly I've never been into a traditional photographic print darkroom. I have done many alternative processes, but have yet to do a traditional print. I've been in printing press type darkrooms (sheet film press copy cameras. copy stands, sinks, multiple types of safelights) and motion picture film changing darkrooms (completely dark with no light, loading/unloading film from canisters)

[Andrej K]

Paint it white, so that you can see (with the safelights on). The only place where it might be a good idea to paint black is behind and over the enlarger - a matte black paint to prevent reflecting stray white light from your enlarger - but the need for this depends on the type of the enlarger.

PS: I have now a "spare" phillips pcs 130 enlarger (up to 6x7), in case you need one..

[Urban Hafner]

Thanks guys! Yes, I wasn't sure if painting it black would be a good idea either. And thanks for the offer Andrej, I may take you up on that! But first I we need to move to the new house.