How to Make a Spare Room Light Tight
If you love photography and feel you can develop your own film then the first thing you need is a dark room in your house or apartment. Since you cannot make your bedroom a darkroom, you will need a spare room that you can black out in order to keep the light away. Even if you do not have a spare room, an extra bathroom will do fine, as blacking out bathrooms is a lot easier than having to work on a whole room with large windows.
Things Required:
– Aluminium Foil
– Masking Tape
– Cardboard
– Window Shade
Instructions
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1
The first thing is to select or identify the room that you want to work on and then start by covering the windows with aluminium foil. You should secure this foil with some high quality masking tape.
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2
You can also place a cardboard on the windows and then secure some aluminium foil, followed by black masking tape. This might sound like a bit too much but it works as the cardboard will cover the areas left by the aluminium and vice versa. You need a fool proof system to properly cover the windows from every angle that you can think of.
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3
The next step involves using a shade over the aluminium covered windows, make sure that the shade covers the windows properly. You can also screw these shades on the walls along the frames of the windows so that they stay fixed.
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4
Remember you want to totally blackout the room, so for that you have to place the masking tape along the edges of the doorways. You will have to do this with precision and make sure that all of the small spaces are completely covered. Apply more tape if you feel that a single coat is not enough.
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5
Now hang another blackout shade in front of the door to make sure it gets covered all the way down to the floor. Since this shade is on the door, you will not be able to permanently fix it in place. However, you can keep it closed in order to be used whenever you want.
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6
Once you are convinced that there is no light entering the room from anywhere, you can then use this space for carefully developing films and photographic paper. Make sure that you know what you are doing as the chemicals that are used for developing film can sometimes be very toxic.
