Tonight I am working on a way to improve the dimensional look of the walls. In the movie, they used lighting to bring out the designs in the walls. See this screen capture from the movie?
I like the look of the long white "trough" light washing down the walls, so I'm going to build a variation of that. It will go around my room on three sides. And it will be cheap and low power consumption. So far, here's the unlikely materials list:
* lightweight PVC house gutter
* gutter hangers mounted upside-down
* drywall screws
* silver metal foil tape inside the gutter to reflect light
* LED bright white (not cool white or yellowy) rope light from Wal-Mart
* sheet of translucent corrugated plastic for a light diffuser "lens"
* vinyl edge "bathroom" moulding in an "F" shape from Lowe's
* recycled plastic mini-blind slats
* white posterboard
* glue and zip-ties
* gray paint (always shades of beautiful gray)
First, I gotsta get my drink on. Here in the cornfields of Indiana, we have Pizza King. What's in your Star Wars desk lighted cup holder?
Now the lighting tests can begin. The upside-down gutter is hung from the wall. That thing needs disguised a LOT so it does not look gutter-y.
The underside has been silver-taped. A rope light is temporarily hung to see what it looks like.
I've cut a small scrap of lens to see what that looks like with a little chunk of thin edge trim.
Much of my room decoration is made from recycled materials. How about I rip up an old mini-blind and use the slats to enhance the front edge?
It's fun to experiment with shapes and materials. In the center of the pic is a proposed light section. At the top, the slats are attached to a piece of posterboard and held in place by the vinyl edge trim. It happens to fit in there perfect. I could construct many feet of that and use it to hide the whole front edge of the gutter from view.
Here I'm holding up a piece of vinyl trim so you can see the end profile is in an "F" shape. This stuff is cheap at $2.30
I think I will build out this light scheme around three sides of the room. All the white stuff will be painted dark gray. And to finish it off, let's see...
* I will probably apply a vinyl "mask" to the lens. The "mask" will divide the lighted area into rectangles so it looks somewhat like the screenshot.
* Or I might develop some weird little black "shutters" that hang down from the light. Seems like that would be easy, yet time-consuming to build all that detail. What would you use for the "shutters" and how would you attach them?