Monday, January 26, 2026
Transitioning your Shop from House Paint to Rosco Off Broadway Scenic Paints
Guild of Scenic Artists: It’s always a special day when you have enough budget to spring for some of the colors designed for theatrical use. I’ve painted so many shows with a budget that required me to rely heavily on the Oops paint selection at a couple of different paint stores.
I came up through the high realism era of Chicago theatre when the industry was starting its recovery from the 2008 recession. Most of the venues are so intimate that the scenic design often bordered on being immersive. The budget was very low so I had to pinch and scrape where I could.
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I’m not a painter, but it is fascinating to me all of the aspects that can go into other departments and their decisions about how to spend money on a production. If I need to paint something, my first idea would be to go to the home center and buy the cheapest can of paint I can find in the color that I need and roll it onto the wall. There's a reason I’m not a scenic painter. I think that on first glance I wouldn’t understand why using a higher quality paint like Rosco Off Broadway would be important, because I do not have the experience of hours and hours of mixing paint and truly understanding how the higher quality pigments and binders actually make a difference to how the paint is applied and reads on stage. On stage we are trying to create worlds that are spectacular and larger than-life, and the first thing we see is the paint. Of course the scenic artist should spec a paint with better pigment, just like I would spec a light with better LED emitters.
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