pauljoseph
Active Member
I've always had a certain obsessive pattern when it comes to the movie watching experience. Used to be a fan of switching off all the lights and putting objects to cover every small led light source in the room to elevate the experience.
Getting the CX OLED was amazing, the blacks are close to watching a miracle through decades of innovation.
But off late, one thing has been bothering me, my living room has white walls all around and even during a full black scene with small white text in the middle, it illuminates the whole room to an extent where the reflected light goes back to the wall behind the TV and illuminates it so much that the TV borders become very visible and annoying.
So, after some discussion with members of this forum who've gone the dark wallpaper way, I decided to do the same thing, except that I don't have a dedicated home theater room and the TV is in the living room.
And due to Covid, I was planning to DIY the entire thing either way. Here were my options:
1. Get a matte black wallpaper and stick it across the entire wall.
Pros: No hassles and very easy to do.
Cons: Expensive. Would cost around 3-4k for my 10x10 feet wall and gets even more expensive for quality stuff. Also, if you don't like it and want to remove, it would take out existing paint and destroy the wall.
(Tip: If you're planning to go ahead with this route, just get A0 size black chart papers and use tape to stick it together and make a large black sheet and place it on the wall to see how much of an aesthetic impact it would have on the living room before pulling the trigger.)
2. Get black velvet cloth which is apparently the best for absorbing light and giving it a complete black effect. Stitch together a large sheet and place it behind the wall.
Pros: Blackest of blacks.
Cons: Normal tape wouldn't cut it. You'll need to nail in some kind of a fixture to have the cloth in place like a curtain or something. This was my initial plan to test out the aesthetics temporarily before moving to wallpaper and paint after a huge discussion with family because nobody liked the idea of a black wall bang in the center of the living room. They thought it would make it look really bad and gave me an option to use the black velvet cloth screen just for movie time at night which needs to be removed after the movie.
Pretty sure my lazy ass wouldn't keep placing and removing the black screen after watching a movie every time and would eventually stop using the screen.
But again, after sending a Dunzo person all across my city, there seemed to be a terrible shortage of black velvet cloth all around. Even the big cloth shops didn't have it or they had extremely expensive ones. Found one shop which had a 60inch roll for around Rs. 300/metre but it looked very low quality and had colour differences and holes which defeats the purpose.
3. So finally, I decided to paint. I also had backup white paint to revert the change if it turned out bad.
Pros: Everything. Also, the cheapest of them all.
Cons: Nothing, if you don't take into account the effort that is.
Materials:
3inch paint brush to cut in the edges.
Acrylic wall putty to fill in cracks and gaps.
Sandpaper to smoothen the wall.
Masking tapes to get perfect edges (Most important tool.)
Nippon Latex wall Primer.
Nippon Matex Gold wall paint 1L can (for 2 coats). Colour (Black Night). ~Rs.350.
All the materials including the paint together wouldn't cost more than 1k.
The only extra variable here is the paint, if you don't like the colour, put primer and repeat the process with a different one. For my 10 feet x 10 feet wall, I just used 1L of Nippon Matex gold wall paint for 2 coats and it has set in properly and I still have more paint left.
There's no way you can get the paint colour right just by looking at it from your mobile screens. After doing a bit of research on the colour, I figured you don't need complete black to get the desired effect, even grey would do. And I ended up selecting a grey-ish colour called Black Night which turned out to be darker than it looked. Although, weirdly enough, the first coat looked absolutely black. The second coat, after it dried, made it slightly tend towards the grey side. It also has blue-ish undertones.
And, after just 2 coats, it has come out really well and it was a hit with my family. Just brought life into the living room.
Had read a lot of interior design articles and they all said, black/dark is a bold colour and you have freedom to use it just on one wall as an accented one. But you also need to complement it with contrasting elements like white photo frames and it would look beautiful. I also changed the switchboards to black coloured ones. I've attached a few pictures of the whole project.
Finally, on Christmas day, I decided to watch something random because I was too lazy to research on which movie has amazing black scenes to inaugurate the wall. I chose to watch the new Pixar movie Soul.
To everyone reading this, PLEASE WATCH SOUL ASAP on your OLEDs. It has a lot of amazing full black scenes and it's also a beautiful movie overall. Almost feels like it's mastered with OLEDs in mind.
I've taken a few photos using a Pixel phone and even though there is a lot of post-processing, I've increased the exposure in some of the all black scenes to show that I'm not cheating with the overall black look XD. It really does make a nice movie viewing experience.
Here are the pictures:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year y'all!!
Getting the CX OLED was amazing, the blacks are close to watching a miracle through decades of innovation.
But off late, one thing has been bothering me, my living room has white walls all around and even during a full black scene with small white text in the middle, it illuminates the whole room to an extent where the reflected light goes back to the wall behind the TV and illuminates it so much that the TV borders become very visible and annoying.
So, after some discussion with members of this forum who've gone the dark wallpaper way, I decided to do the same thing, except that I don't have a dedicated home theater room and the TV is in the living room.
And due to Covid, I was planning to DIY the entire thing either way. Here were my options:
1. Get a matte black wallpaper and stick it across the entire wall.
Pros: No hassles and very easy to do.
Cons: Expensive. Would cost around 3-4k for my 10x10 feet wall and gets even more expensive for quality stuff. Also, if you don't like it and want to remove, it would take out existing paint and destroy the wall.
(Tip: If you're planning to go ahead with this route, just get A0 size black chart papers and use tape to stick it together and make a large black sheet and place it on the wall to see how much of an aesthetic impact it would have on the living room before pulling the trigger.)
2. Get black velvet cloth which is apparently the best for absorbing light and giving it a complete black effect. Stitch together a large sheet and place it behind the wall.
Pros: Blackest of blacks.
Cons: Normal tape wouldn't cut it. You'll need to nail in some kind of a fixture to have the cloth in place like a curtain or something. This was my initial plan to test out the aesthetics temporarily before moving to wallpaper and paint after a huge discussion with family because nobody liked the idea of a black wall bang in the center of the living room. They thought it would make it look really bad and gave me an option to use the black velvet cloth screen just for movie time at night which needs to be removed after the movie.
Pretty sure my lazy ass wouldn't keep placing and removing the black screen after watching a movie every time and would eventually stop using the screen.
But again, after sending a Dunzo person all across my city, there seemed to be a terrible shortage of black velvet cloth all around. Even the big cloth shops didn't have it or they had extremely expensive ones. Found one shop which had a 60inch roll for around Rs. 300/metre but it looked very low quality and had colour differences and holes which defeats the purpose.
3. So finally, I decided to paint. I also had backup white paint to revert the change if it turned out bad.
Pros: Everything. Also, the cheapest of them all.
Cons: Nothing, if you don't take into account the effort that is.
Materials:
3inch paint brush to cut in the edges.
Acrylic wall putty to fill in cracks and gaps.
Sandpaper to smoothen the wall.
Masking tapes to get perfect edges (Most important tool.)
Nippon Latex wall Primer.
Nippon Matex Gold wall paint 1L can (for 2 coats). Colour (Black Night). ~Rs.350.
All the materials including the paint together wouldn't cost more than 1k.
The only extra variable here is the paint, if you don't like the colour, put primer and repeat the process with a different one. For my 10 feet x 10 feet wall, I just used 1L of Nippon Matex gold wall paint for 2 coats and it has set in properly and I still have more paint left.
There's no way you can get the paint colour right just by looking at it from your mobile screens. After doing a bit of research on the colour, I figured you don't need complete black to get the desired effect, even grey would do. And I ended up selecting a grey-ish colour called Black Night which turned out to be darker than it looked. Although, weirdly enough, the first coat looked absolutely black. The second coat, after it dried, made it slightly tend towards the grey side. It also has blue-ish undertones.
And, after just 2 coats, it has come out really well and it was a hit with my family. Just brought life into the living room.
Had read a lot of interior design articles and they all said, black/dark is a bold colour and you have freedom to use it just on one wall as an accented one. But you also need to complement it with contrasting elements like white photo frames and it would look beautiful. I also changed the switchboards to black coloured ones. I've attached a few pictures of the whole project.
Finally, on Christmas day, I decided to watch something random because I was too lazy to research on which movie has amazing black scenes to inaugurate the wall. I chose to watch the new Pixar movie Soul.
To everyone reading this, PLEASE WATCH SOUL ASAP on your OLEDs. It has a lot of amazing full black scenes and it's also a beautiful movie overall. Almost feels like it's mastered with OLEDs in mind.
I've taken a few photos using a Pixel phone and even though there is a lot of post-processing, I've increased the exposure in some of the all black scenes to show that I'm not cheating with the overall black look XD. It really does make a nice movie viewing experience.
Here are the pictures:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year y'all!!
