Dry Erase White Board Paint for Offices | Hacker News Reader

Dry Erase White Board Paint for Offices

ideapaint.com

41 pointsbeagledude35 comments

I pressed for a long long time to get whiteboard walls at our office. Mostly because it would be a cool/hip thing to have, and, you know, cool and hip makes you productive right?

Seriously though; it is pretty useful when brainstorming. But the BEST use is the one next to my desk where I can lean over and jot notes & progress updates etc. at will. No more post-it notes cluttering up the place :D

The other advantage over a traditional Whiteboard is the sheer size. I always run out of space on normal boards, an entire wall isn't infinite, but it takes significantly long to fill.

Some tips. This is only a "chuck it on the wall" product if you are not overly concerned with the look (for example; using it for a cafe price board etc.). In an office w/o the proper prep it can look nasty, uneven and start to get messy in very little time.

You really need to re-plaster the walls, then sand them finely (this is the big pain). And then seal them properly with a skinning under coat (that will iron out any tiny bumps). Hopefully leaving you with a nice flat surface.

We skipped this bit the first time and had to re-do the entire test wall after about 2 months.

The big problem with this is your walls have to be really, really flat for it to work like a real whiteboard.

What we found that works even better -- and cheaper! -- is to go to your local hardware store and pick up some tileboard (used for doing shower interiors, etc). It's like $5 a sheet and is the same material used in whiteboards! And if you're cheap you can just glue it directly to the wall.

Thanks!

I find that I save a ton of money buying and using items that are marketed for other purposes than I intend. Usually you get the same or better quality without the mark-up. This sounds like no exception.

I did this, and made frames for them, so they just lean against the wall, and actually look pretty decent. Very cheap project.

Did you paint them at all or just throw them up there in their raw state?

Yup, I actually did this same thing this weekend! It was a little over $10 a sheet (not $5 as you say), but that's nothing compared to OfficeMax quoting me $163 for a 4x6 foot (framed) whiteboard.

$13.04 for a 4x8 sheet at Lowes: <a href="http://www.lowes.com/pd_16605-46498-300_0__?productId=301523... 1/8"D x 4'W x 8'H Trifty White Hardboard Wall Panel, Item #: 16605</a>

Or, they also stock a 32"x48" piece ( <a href="http://www.lowes.com/pd_61082-46498-31023248_0__?productId=3... #: 61082</a> ) if you just want one for a cube wall.

Note that this won't be magnetic. The OfficeMax representative said that the magnetic variety was around 3x as expensive as the non-magnetic. Comparing $13.04 to $489, I think I can make that sacrifice.

I'm cheap, but I secured mine to every other stud (32") with some polebarn screws I had on hand (nice white hex head, rubber washer to avoid crushing the hardboard). That way, I just have to spackle and repaint 8 little holes, instead of re-doing the drywall. Cheaper in the long run!

Oh, and it works great as a whiteboard.

Curses. How do I get URLs to work? I've tried `[markdown](http:\\example.com)` and <a href="http:\\example.com">HTML</a>. Those URLs are ugly; I don't want to use the URL->link facility recommended in the formatting help: http://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

nice idea. ideapaint has been around for some years now. at our office, we gave it a thought.

pros:

- biggest possible room for your ideas (your walls)

- that's it - but the above is a big one

cons:

- toxic

- pain in the ass to get on the wall

- uncleanable since walls are not flat

- even bigger pain in the ass to get it off the wall once you change your office location

also:

we compared the cost/m² and it turned out that ideapaint costs more than regular whiteboard (at least in Germany that's the case).

I'm not sure if it is the same specific brand, but I bought a tin of this and was warned it is toxic until 100% dry.

In fact, even when it is dry it is toxic but inert. However do be careful of the fumes as you apply it - especially if your office is not well ventilated.

We use this at the office and it works pretty well. It's not exactly the same as writing on a real whiteboard, but having an entire wall for drawing database diagrams is very useful. Our wall is like most walls, I guess, in that it is not perfectly flat like a whiteboard. The small divots and bumps make it nearly impossible to clean (especially if the writing has been left there for a while).

The cleaning is the biggest thing. I've seen this in a few places and there are always red and blue tints left over from erasing. Old writing tends to be a bit hard to take off without some kind of liquid spray.

I think the big problem is that plaster walls just aren't flat enough to prevent ink hiding in the divots and creases. So you can wipe over the surface but never get the little spots out of those imperfections.

We've painted a whiteboard-sized area of our office with this stuff. There's no border to tell you where the whiteboard paint finishes. As you'd expect, the ink is no longer confined to the bit that's wipe-clean. Otherwise (with the spray proviso above) it's been very useful, and we can always extend it with another pot later.

Another alternative is those statically charged pieces of "whiteboard paper" - Whiteyboard is mentioned below, and there's also http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/ - although they don't stay up tidily for much longer than a couple of weeks. I think they're only really meant to last e.g. a day-long meeting.

You get that with real actual genuine whiteboards, too. They all need cleaning, every so often.

Previous Discussion of IdeaPaint:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=699602

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=701255

Wall-based whiteboards are a standard at youDevise. We found whiteboard wallpaper that seems better than the paint - can dig up the name for anyone interested.

Agree it is important to keep clean as you go but ours seems fine after 6 months of heavy use.

I'm interested. Ideapaint is intriguing, but has too many drawbacks.

It'll take awhile to find out (the person who ordered and installed it has moved on, so I really do have to dig around for it). How can I send you an email with the name?

www.whiteyboard.com/index.php -- perhaps?

I found it!

http://www.tektura.com/pages/display_pattern.asp?Type=Range&...

I'd love to paint a couple walls with this when I get a more permanent office.

If you like moving around with your whiteboard check out: http://www.whiteyboard.com/

You can move it around and wash it and it's fairly cheap.

Seconded. I live in rental apartment and painting walls is not an option for me. I have their biggest size surface stuck to my wall and I love it. The only downside that I found so far is that if dry erase marker writing stay there for a longer time, they do not come off as easily as from traditional whiteboard. But paper towels (and sometimes a little bit of cleaning solution) easily solve that.

Very cheap alternative: cellophane. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBMUI-Mj_YU

We tried this at our old office -- wasn't a huge fan. It tends to bubble up and doesn't erase well. Our new office heavily uses IdeaPaint, and assuming you can swallow the cost, it's an infinitely better solution.

Malamine board from hardware store, 8X4: $14

Install in 20 minutes (screw to wall), doesn't have to dry, removable, perfectly flat.

This is what I did too. I used the little plastic notches (probably not the right term) that you screw into the wall to mount bathroom mirrors.

Two huge white boards, flat, easy to remove, < $30.

The word is "Melamine", which is the name of the resin used to bind the wood powders in that family of engineered wood products.

You actually want tile board, which is a coated, thin hardboard used in bathroom walls. The particles in hardboard are finer than medium-density fiberboard (MDF), which is finer than particle board), all of which are varieties of melamine board.

has anyone used this and give a recommendation? I'd love to try this, but it'd be nice to have a third-party perspective or even see it in action somewhere

We have it in our office and it works well. I might look into the wallpaper though, we had to plaster the walls first which took a lot of time.

It's way better than a whiteboard though, it's another feeling to be able to draw on the entire wall.

I don't know if it's the same brand, but they use it in the conference rooms at one of the places I work and it's terrible. It's so difficult to clean that they've already repainted after just a couple of months. Now no one is allowed to keep their work on them overnight, and they've banned low-odor markers (apparently those stain more?).

We gave away about 75 cans at our first Swagapalooza conference 18 months ago and I haven't heard any complaints.

I used one of these on Friday, and I was disappointed. It was painted well - very flat and consistent. But it just wasn't the same as a whiteboard. There's a smoothness and a polish to a real board that doesn't seem to happen with these paint types.

WhiteyBoard has peel and stick whiteboards in large sizes at pretty affordable prices. I'm trying to decide between this and the shower wall method right now.

http://www.whiteyboard.com/

As a general tip for dried on marker with whiteboards, I've always found that drawing over the old stuff, and the rubbing off the new ink works very well.

That tip also works when someone accidentally writes on the board with a permanent marker.

We used Ideapaint at our office and it still works and looks great two years later. I would highly recommend it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com