Painting a wall in your home office studio with green paint can be one of the most cost-effective ways to create a green screen. Painted surfaces are durable, flat and not prone to wrinkles (the curse of muslin green screens). But you must choose the right paint or your efforts will be doomed from the start. Choosing the best greenscreen paint comes down to three things: finish, coverage, and color.

The right paint finish

Home interior paints come in a wide variety of finishes including satin, semi-gloss, and semi-gloss. Optimal greenscreen finish provides a flat, even surface that minimizes surface blemishes and reflections. The best paint finish for your home office green screen is matte paint. Flat paint creates a slightly dull, chalky-looking finish that hides imperfections and will do a great job of distributing light evenly when it’s time to illuminate your studio.

Flat finishes are less resistant to stains and more difficult to clean than others. Keep some extra paint on hand for touch-ups.

Paint coverage

If you’re choosing house paint to save money on your green screen, be careful not to over-economize. Inexpensive paints use inexpensive fillers that reduce the amount of color pigment used in each gallon. The result is a very thin layer of color that does not cover the wall effectively. You end up having to put more layers of paint on the wall to get proper color coverage. Brush marks and uneven color may not be important when painting your garage interior, but they will make a big difference to the results you get from your green screen.

Choose a brand paint designed for single coat coverage. The primed paints do an excellent job. Then apply at least two coats of paint to ensure even coverage. Most home paints will cover 300-350 square feet per gallon. Usually one gallon will suffice for a large wall, with a little left over for touch-ups.

Paint color

Successful greenscreen compositing relies on having the correct color behind your artist. Home paints create a specific color the same way you did in art class. They mix various pigments of different colors to arrive at the color on the tile table. The process works well and facilitates the efficient provision of a rainbow of color options at your local center.

Professional greenscreen paints do not use pigment mixtures. They carefully select pigments that have exactly the right shade of pure green. There is no chance that the color is a little ‘off’. “This makes the paint more expensive to produce and less versatile for other uses. If you can afford the premium price, buy the good stuff. But you can get great results with less expensive paints.

Don’t trust your eyes when selecting colors. Choosing a pure green color is much more difficult than you think. The one that looks good will generally have subtle nuances that will make it much more difficult for your editing software to separate the background and foreground. If you can get a small sample of chromakey green paint or fabric, take it to the store and have them use their color matching computer to create a custom paint mix. This will give you the best possible results with home paints.

If you don’t have a color swatch to scan, there are some pre-mixed paint color mixes that independent video producers have tested and found to give the best possible results. Pick one of these colors and you can be sure of getting great results from your home office green screen.