Next weekend I am going to paint my train room, however, I never thought picking a colour would be so difficult. Currently I am leaning towards a slate colour (greyish green).
Two questions:
Should I avoid a dark colour because it may effect the lighting (light reflection) on the room, and make the layout seem too dark?
What colour is your train room? I am curious to find out what non-white colour is popular?
Thanks in advance.
Sky blue.
a very neutral gray, not too light, not too dark.
My layout space is basic white, except for the floor which is concrete grey. That will be changed in limited areas, as necessary to properly accent the modeling:
Other things which impact the color scheme are the valences and fascia panels (which will be left the natural dark mud brown Masonite(r) color) and the under-benchwork curtains (I’m leaning toward black, or horizontal stripes that resemble a cross-section of underground strata.)
The layout itself should be brightly lighted for construction and ‘daytime’ operation, the floor should be lighted well enough to make ‘trip-traps’ in the walkways visible, the rest of the room can be as dark as a cave unless it is used for other, non-model-railroad purposes. (Searching for dropped objects is best done with a hand-held light source.)
Just my [2c]. Other opinions will certainly differ.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I took the “museum” approach … from the benchwork to the ceiling, and the ceiling above the benchwork / behind the valence is sky blue. Everything else - facia / valence / ceiling above aisle-way is black !!! The wall below the bench work and the floor are a very dark green. It may sound rather extreme, but it gives you is a rather unique feeling of standing in a non-dimensional space. I find a lot of people reaching for the ceiling just to get a bearing on where it is !!! [(-D]
Mark.
My layout area has basic sheetrock walls(painted white). The lowest trackage is 40" off of the floor, and a 12" facia painted a medium brown runs along the edge if the layout. There is a 24" backdrop(Agean Blue with clouds) behind the layout, and above that is about 22" of space. I covered that with burlap and trimmed it with some oak molding I got from the local home center. I think this finished off the room quite nice. I have mounted some railroad logo/awards/etc on that burlap border. Now to do something about the floor! I am thinking of some type of epoxy paint rather than carpeting at this time. The layout is in a 25’ by 20’ area of the basement. One 7’ by 12’ corner is a seperate room(utilities/laundry/staging).
If you do not have a backdrop, I would go with something ‘light’ as you will lose a lot of reflected light. I have 9 48" flourescent fixtures to light the layout. One thing I have noticed on layout tours is a lack of lighting for many layouts. In a discussion with a fellow, I mentioned that $100 invested in lighting really helps when working on the layout, and displays it better for open houses. His response was for that much money he could buy ‘another’ engine!
Jim
You could use RR colors:
http://www.worldoftrainz.com/Pages/Tutorials_TRS2004/Colors/RailRoadColorsUSA.htm
Here is a photo with a sample of my wall colour. It is a sandy-beige colour.
Powder blue works well for walls before a more specific sky is added. My benchwork used to be black on a prior layout but it seemed to make the space feel smaller. Now I use flat battleship grey on all benchwork and roadbed. It works well under grey tones of ballast. It seems less distracting in unfinished areas than bright white wood. Facia and control panels are the gloss version of the same grey. It looks good as a background for diagrams and stays much cleaner than white.
Behind the backdrop it’s white with light red sandstone flecks.
Right now my ‘layout room’ is still just the concrete block and cement floor basement, I’m working on getting it ready for the new layout. I painted the walls with a first coat of water sealing white paint. The concrete blocks are about 8" high, so I painted the lower 5 (about 40")with the same white, and everything above that with a pastel blue. It’s one of the colors the brand of paint I used to water seal with comes in, it’s pretty close to sky blue / baby blue.
I’m not sure if the backdrop on my new layout (which will basically be a shelf layout) will go all the way to the ceiling or not, so I figure if it doesn’t the blue walls won’t stand out above the sky backdrop. Everything below the layout is going to be storage so I don’t care that much what color that part is. It looks pretty good to me now, plus having the color separation about the level of the layout (which will be around 42"-46") helps visualize how it will look.
Concrete with accents of concrete.
When the light’s off it’s black; actually my train room is cluttered and I don’t think clutter is a colour.
My train room is what is supposed to be our dining room…in reality it has been our tool/junk/work room during our 4 year rehab-while-living-in-it project. We had to take a sanity break in the rehabbing, so currently it is still 70s fake brick on the lower half and floral print wall paper on the upper half. I do have a nifty chandelier for lighting though…LOL. Real railroady, heh? Who knows what color(s) it will end up when we get around to tackling that room.
Presently beige. When we move & I have a real train room, it will be UP Harbor Mist & Dark Gray with Armor yellow & red trim![:D]
Mine is PINK, yep I really need to start putting up drywall in the basement.
When I started this layout , I built a room in the basement just for it. 12x16 , painted it blue . Got my sky that way.
The two walls the layout is mounted to are blue with clouds painted on (it is Masonite on studs against the cinder block walls)
The rest of the layout room is white. In an effort to get the most light from my flourescent fixtures I used a high gloss white. It was a bear to apply but the overall feel of the room is brightly lit. Otherwise the rough texture of the cinder block tends to soak up light
THe museum effect can be very dramatic but also to my mind tends to discourage extended time in the layout room especially in the winter when light deprivation sets in.
Dave Nelson
Hi,
My layout runs around the walls of an 11 x 15 ex bedroom. A backdrop mural is on all of the walls from the layout surface to about 2 feet above (if I did it over, it would reach up 30 to 36 inches). From the top of the mural to the ceiling, and including the ceiling, is all painted with Sears best ceiling white. That really helps reflect the light and helps light up the entire area somewhat equally.
I recently repainted the white as the original white was fading, and the new paint made a striking difference.
The idea of painting the entire upper walls and ceiling a skyblue is appealing and I thought about doing just that. But, I was afraid that it would darken the room too much, and stuck with the white.
Good luck!!!
Mobilman44
Me too.