Stage Floor Paint

Shout out! (I work at Lowe's). [user]gafftaper[/user] I'm not sure about what paint you're talking about (I'm not a paint man myself), but I'll check on it tomorrow and report back with what I find out.
 
We just use the cheapest flat black paint we can find...usually the house brand from Benny's. It works fine and we repaint the floor in the style of the show for each show anyways so it doesn't matter. We paint it black in between shows for functions, dancers, chorus, and talent shows...etc. We probably go through 50 gallons of paint a year or more. We also replace the top layer of Masonite on our floor every 2 to 3 years.
 
We use the Rosco Tough Black Primer with a water-based pearl clear coat whenever we repaint our stage floor black. It covers anything in a single coat with amazing coverage. It takes about one-and-a-half gallons to put on a coat on our 35 x 40 acting area. I've not found a blacker black.

Every 3 years or so we rent a floor sander to take off the paint build-up. With the number of coats that accumulate over the years, haven't had to replace the masonite since it was originally installed in 1996.
 
We too have to repaint and replace the masonite frequently. Druing dance season, April - June, we usually have to repaint the stage over 6 times!!! as the stage is danced on non-stop 12 hours a day 5 days a week! and throughout the whole year we usually repaint 10 times or more.
We use Benjamin Moore Aura paint and it covers very nicely. we are currently looking into some top coat to protect it a little more so we don't need to repaint quite so often, but for the dancers it can't be slippery, and the GM doesn't want any gloss.
 
We generally use American Tradition Interior Latex from Lowe's. It seems to have better coverage than Wal-Martr's and seems to be a bit more durable, with fewer- if any- touch-ups during our three weekend runs.

Two years ago, our former ED repainted the house floor, going from the 15 year old dark blue (I wish I knew what that paint was; WOW it held up!) to Rosco Off Broadway. It actually sucked up so much light that we had four falls by audience members within a short period of time after, and we wound up having to redo our house lighting. That was a lot of money for people to get hurt, and the Rosco is already coming up. Coulda been poor prep, but I wasn't impressed with the ROB...
 
Back when I had a masonite cover, I used the Rosco Tough Black Primer, too. It was great stuff; very durable & black. Many of the paints you have mixed at local stores comes out looking various shades of gray. A paint rep once told me why, but I don't recall.
 
Many of the paints you have mixed at local stores comes out looking various shades of gray. A paint rep once told me why, but I don't recall.

The short answer is 'you can't get there from here'... Trying to mix a black from the primary colors in a tinting mixer just doesn't work, you have to have true black pigment, and lots of it. If you think of a color wheel, and picture white to black as an axle through it, when you only have certain colors available, you can only mix hues that are towards the center of the color wheel, or, to put it another way, green + orange does not yield yellow. To get any pure color, you need the pure pigment, and with non-black pigments, you just can't mix them dark enough to become a true black. Sometimes a clerk will try, but even if the tinter is stocked with black, they won't believe how much they need to put in.

I've always just used whatever's cheapest. The platforms I have in stock now sometimes get used outdoors, so I use exterior grades to protect the wood, but otherwise I don't spend more than I have to. When I was at a community theater, we'd leave the floor however it was painted for the previous show until we had a need to take it back to black - figured it was a waste of time and paint to do so if there weren't any events in between shows with scenically painted floors.
 
At the school I went to, we never painted the stage to go with the show.. I found it odd but it was cheaper. Although, since we had no workshop all of our painting and construction took place on the stage. Ditzy High School Girls + Colored Paint+ black stage= fail. We painted the stage black after every show and we just bought the cheapest stuff we could get in a flat black latex. We watered it down for more covering. The stage was so odd, i should upload a picture sometime. It had no fly space, was about 75 feet across and 25 foot back. No catwalk lights, no electrics. Everything technical was like an operators patch board. The wings were hidden by Giant black cinder block walls (that we also had to paint black. The 2 curtains (a barney purple and a mustard yellow for the school colors) were on a motorized system so it took 23 seconds to open and close... But the moral of the story is... Watered down paint goes far it took us about 2-3 gallons and thats it... including walls.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back