I am in the process of remodeling a room for my trains. New sheetrock on wall and ceiling. My question is paint the walls white or blue. What color for the ceiling.
I painted my walls white and then bought some cloud wallpaper and put that up around the layout. I used a suspended ceiling because of uneven rafters with recessed floursecent lights. Pictures can be seen at www.members.iquest.net/~leghome/index.html
I recommend white semi-gloss for the ceiling and light blue matte for the walls. The semi-gloss gives good indirect light reflection without being shiny. The light blue matte does not reflect, but allows for a backdrop to be added later down at the track and scenery level. A friend removed the sky from a Walthers rural backdrop and pasted the remaining rolling hills and farms onto the wall. Then he cut out the clouds and pasted them randomly around the walls, above the farm scenes. It is very effective! [ 31 January 2002, 03:12: Message edited by: Hank Coolidge ]
Now you may think this is weird but the skyboards on my layout are 24 inches high. The walls behind them and up to the rafters I painted flat black. I haven't done anything about the rafters yet other than directing all light down so the rafters and subfloor of the room above appear very dark. What this does is to bring your eye right to the layout. I was very pleased and surprised that it works so well. Not to everyones tastes I am sure and there was some risk in doing this but I am very happy I did. Get adventurous eh!
Robin, that makes a lot of sense ... it must be very effective. One question ... doesn't this require much more lighting to achieve the same amount of illumination at the layout surface as would be achieved with a "white" ceiling? The more I visualize the effect the more I think about repainting my ceiling and upper walls ... Oh No, NOT another Change!
Lighting of a layout depends on personal choices. How bright is bright and there has been all kinds of discussions on the topic. At the moment, I use 10 4ft cool white flourescent tubes and 6 40 watt incandescent bulbs. I will be adding foscus lights to draw attention to various features such as structures, My layout occupies a basement area that is 27ft long and 11ft wide. I guess I will have to complete the layout to see what changes may be needed. I don't believe all areas of a layout need the same light levels much like we can experience in the real world. My old two level layout with lighting only 20inches above the track was great ilumination but the just over 100 40 watt lights had too much of a red shift to them that's why I am trying flourescents as well this time
The room is 11 feet 6 inches square. There will be two 4 foot fluoresecent wrap around light fixtures. One 8 foot track light on a dimmer. I look at your site Leghome it looks very good but my ability to put up wall paper does not exist. I will probabily go with Hanks suggestion, blue on the walls and white on the ceiling. Thanks for the sugestions.
Here's a thought: I put the covers of all those Model Railroader magazines to good use. I mounted them edge to edge on poster board. Then this is glued or thumb tacked to the sheet rock. It's a cool-looking wallpaper.
I paint the walls a suitable sky blue (this to your taste), the ceiling over the railroad white, flourescent fixtures mounted to the ceiling with a drop ceiling consisting of frames made from ripped 1x4 pine (3/4x3/4) resting on aluminum angle suspended from the ceiling, the frames have white butcher paper attached which acts as a diffuser. The valance and ceiling over the aisle are painted black. This frames the layout nicely, and provides even lighting. Gary
On the matter of lighting, if 'normal' (incandescent) lamps are too yellow, and fluorescents are too (or whatever it is that they often seem to be), consider low voltage tungsten halogen lamps. These are commonly seen in the form of the 2inch diameter spot/floods used in shop displays, but other forms exist. They aren't usually cheap to install because they are 12V and the transformers bump the cost up, but they give a very white light that is good for colour rendering. Note - the 2 inch units come in 20/35/50 watt versions and beams from 10...60 degrees spread (in europe anyway) so check what you are getting against your needs. There are some mains versions now available too (saves on the transformer), but they seem to have about half the light output AND half the lamp life of the 12V lamps, so they may be a false economy. 12V lamps typically have a 4000 hour life.
Regards lighting ... I use a series of 4-foot flourescent shoplight fixtures, about 3 feet above the main track circuit. However, I install one Cool White tube and one Warm White tube in each fixture. This seems to provide a better balance between the blue and red ends of the spectrum. I hadn't thought of using Halogens, they seem to provide an almost pure white spectrum.
I know what you meen about florescent lighting. What I did with it was use the GE Ultra Daylight bulbs . They are a lot bluer than normal bulbs and really bring out the colors better.......Mike
On my layout, I went with a light grayish blue for the walls (like suggested by Ridgerunner) until I got a backdrop going, which is what I'm doing now. For the backdrop, I painted it Sherwin-Williams Universe Blue 16 inches up from the layout, then used cloud and rolling hills/mountain stencils. I used Rustoleum camoflauge colors for hills & mountains and Krylon flat white for the clouds. The ceiling is typical accoustical white. LIghting is flourescent (kitchen lighting) from the ceiling. Be careful about how much flourescent lighting you use. It really brings out the details....good and bad. I strongly recommend the Universe Blue, as it seems to resemble actual sky more than anything else I've seen. Problem is, it's not in Sherwin-Williams' current color book. They'll have to look it up, so be persistent with them. (No affiliation with Sherwin Williams). By the way, guys. I'm a new list member and really think this is by far the best list around.
