As the room gets lighter and lighter the darker the shade of grey the screen material should be. Projector and screen manufacturers recommend a white screen in completely dark rooms (unless the projector is too bright for the screen size and will light up the room). In rooms that are not completely dark a grey screen begins to have its advantage. In some projection applications a screen with a shade of grey may be better because the projector is too bright for the size of screen being used in a dark room. The goal of a grey screen should be to offer better contrast for most projectors. A grey screen will absorb some of the light that hits it or reflects onto it better than a white projection screen. The grey projection screen material will absorb ambient light because any shade other than white begins to absorb light. This makes the levels of contrast higher than what a white screen can do. With the shade of grey the black levels are deeper, but with the extra gain or reflectiveness the white levels don't drop as much. A high contrast screen will add the shade of grey but also be a little reflective. Adding a shade of grey to a projection screen material will lower the white levels and black levels equally. Grey screens can be grey or high contrast screens. Weaknesses: Slight loss in brighter colors. Strengths: Increased ability to retain black level in cases of uncontrolled and ambient light. Weaknesses: Washout more likely in casesĀ of uncontrolled and ambient lighting. Stenghths: Brighter colors and good reflectivity. Sporting events look fantastic on a white screen with some light in the room. Sporting events are very bright and do not have deep black scenes during the game. You may watch sporting events during the day. Because the viewing of movies is mainly at night a white screen would be perfect for most situations. Some people use their projection screen at night to watch movies.
If you do not have good light control or your projector does not have a lot of contrast, then you may consider matte grey. It is by far our most popular screen material we sell because most people like the way it performs. If you have good light control and you are looking for brilliant colors, then you should most likely choose matte white.
Our matte grey material does tend to look more dull than our matte white, simply because of the grey tint on the material - but there is very little color shifting since our factory keeps the tint in the grey range so that the colors themselves do not shift toward blue, red, or any other color shade.
The colors are not as bright as they would appear on a white screen, but grey screens are great for making black in the projected image appear darker and is a great choice for rooms that have some ambient lighting present, since the additional contrast helps overcome image "washout" that happens when unwanted ambient light hits the screen. Grey materials are designed to provide higher picture contrast by lowing the black levels in the projected image. White materials are usually the best choice for when you have good control over the room lighting - for example if you are showing the screen in a basement with no outside lighting coming in the room.