I am in the planning stages of building a home theater. I have a finished basement that I want to turn into a Home Theater room only. I do have 2 windows that I will have to get light blocking curtains for. I am trying to come up with a nice paint scheme for my walls. I have been toying with the idea of a teal or dark cherry. I was told that I should paint the wall where the screen is going to be on a flat black which would help with the contrast. Is this true? Do I need to paint the ceiling too? Also my room size 16 x 16. I have been doing searches online to see what other people's rooms look like to get an idea of how I want mine to look.
Chuck I think your dealer should be able to tell you more about that. Some of these screens really help in reflecting the light and the cheaper ones are thin and don't. You should check to see whether background paint will make a difference to your screen.
The closer the walls or ceiling is to the screen, the darker you should go with paint. You did not say how high or how close the ceiling is, but it and the side walls will reflect most of the light back onto the screen. The actual wall the screen hangs on has less effect. It is a good idea to blacken the area behind the screen to prevent light pass through and bouncing back through the screen but painting the whole wall this color is probably not acceptable to others.
Dark Gold or Bronze Dark Green or Olive Red or Terracota
All of these make good colors to reduce glare and still provide a room you can live in when the lights are on.
If you have high ceilings, you may not need to paint it.
Thanks for your advice and the paint choices. I believe my ceilings are about 8 1/2 feet high down in the basement where the theater will be. Even though I will be using a screen and a projector set up, I noticed tonight when watching a movie on my plasma screen with all the lights off in the room that the side walls were being lit from the light coming from the tv. I am sure if those walls were darker and maybe even a flat color, it would have kept the room a little bit darker.