Do It Yourself Projection Screens

I recently purchased an Epson Powerlite S1 multimedia projector for my home entertainment system. That left me with the problem of what to project the image onto. I looked at a number of manufacturer's screens, pull-downs, wall mounts, and more. No matter what I did, I was looking at at least $400 and in many cases, $1000 or more. Given that the projector cost just over $1000, that sort of expense just wasn't in the budget.

Fortunately, I came across this this page which explains how to make your own projection screen out of a few 1x4's and blackout cloth. You'll also need to read stretching a canvas.

I made one refinement to his design: I got my wife to help me sew the corners of the frame cloth at a 45 degree angle. The reason for this was that my screen was to hang from the ceiling, and since I was going to be taking it up and down regularly, I wanted the frame to be more rigid than it would have been if I had made it as Dan did with the cloth tucked in between the wood on each corner. The resulting corners fit tightly over the frame, and the frame itself ended up quite stiff. I then stapled the cloth in the back. There are some slight puckers in the inner corner, but when you are viewing distance from the screen, they are not noticeable.

One recommendation I would make is to invest in an electric staple gun. When stretched, the blackout cloth rips slightly around the staple holes, so I stretched and then hammered each one down to distribute the strain over the whole length of the staple, and put staples about every inch to make sure it would hold together in the long term. That's a lot of stapling with a manual gun.

I selected cotton broadcloth ($2.50/m) for my surround, as I thought lighter would be better, and I couldn't see anything through it so I was sure it would hide the wood, but a heavier cloth might work better when sewn. If you are thinking of skipping the black surround, don't. If your image doesn't exactly fit the screen, the black swallows up the excess and makes for a much cleaner image edge.

Four heavy-duty cup hooks, a couple of anchors, and two 14" pieces of chain mounted the screen to the ceiling, and by making the height adjustments at the top of the chain, I don't have to guess which link to put the hooks through each time I put the screen up.

The final screen dimensions ended up being 54"x72" (4:3) since the blackout cloth ($8.50/m) I used was 55" wide (a little more when stretched.) Be nice to the blackout cloth, rolling rather than folding it, after some careless handling, I ended up spending quite a bit of time ironing it before I put it onto the frame although once stretched, I'm not sure the folds would still show.

If you're thinking about trying this for your home theatre, I highly recommend it. The blackout cloth I found has no texture to it, it is just matte white and makes for a very nice picture. One nice thing this screen has over my father's expensive brand-name screen, is that no light gets through the cloth at all to reflect off the wall behind.

To make this screen took about an hour of woodworking, two hours of shopping, an hour for sewing and two hours for stretching and stapling. Total cost, about $55.

The final seal of approval came from my sister, notoriously skeptical about all home theatre goodies, when she told her husband he could build one of these for their living room.