Paint that turns walls (or any surface) into a whiteboard. | Hacker News Reader

Paint that turns walls (or any surface) into a whiteboard.

ideapaint.com

112 pointsfnazeeri67 comments

Our company (http://www.clockwork.net) used ideapaint to create wall/whiteboards in our new office this spring.

Yes, there are other whiteboard paints. This stuff is different, and far superior. Dry-erase marker comes of instantly. No residue at all.

It's some kind of epoxy or similar material, with a separate catalyst which is mixed with the paint. It forms a very thick, incredibly hard surface.

Yes, the price is quite high. That sucks.

The odor also sucks. It smells like superglue for a day or so after installation. The whole building smelled bad for a few days. After a week the smell disappeared completely.

It's also very high-gloss. This was a big disappointment for one of the rooms, which has a projector aimed at the whiteboard/wall. The glare was awful.

On average though, it's a good product. It makes a fantastic whiteboard.

would love to see pictures.

Slightly less innovative: use glass (windows, doors, or just put glass panes on the wall). Works better than any whiteboard I've seen, we've had one in our house for 10 years and it erases completely no matter how long stuff has been on it.

Here's a How-To for a glass whiteboard: http://www.instructables.com/id/A_glass_whiteboard/

Cool idea, but at $3.99/sq.ft that's hundreds of dollars per wall. I bought an 8'x4' sheet of melamine for less than $10, which would have been over $120 for that much paint.

White boards are so limited in where you can put them. I think if the purchase decision is "do I paint this 4' by 8' patch of the wall" or "do I install a 4' x 8' white board" then the choice is easy. But having paint that can go on any surface and that will clean after every usage opens many possibilities. My home office, for example, doesn't have space for a 4' x 8' whiteboard but otherwise has good space.

Also, have you used any of those $10 sheets of melamine? They ghost up after a couple of months of use...

"Also, have you used any of those $10 sheets of melamine? They ghost up after a couple of months of use..."

I've used them. They require some labor-intensive prep work, and there are some markers that seem to take a more permanent liking to the surface, but otherwise not bad (unless you leave that To Do list up for two months).

Yes, you are exactly right. I'd argue that if you value your employee's time at anything north of, say $10 per hour, then having a super-quality whiteboard would be a hugely positive ROI investment.

Think of it as a giant shared 3rd monitor. Would you buy monitors that ghosted if your programmers typed the "wrong" letter combinations?

shrug

All you need is a 3$ bottle of white board cleaning spray

...white board cleaning spray

...which works less each time around, and stinks, and uses paper towels, and takes a few minutes of wiping each time you want to get (close to) clean again.

Top-quality surfaces wipe back to bright white with a single swipe or two of the dry-eraser, even if the text has been up for weeks. They're worth it for many offices.

You're probably right that a nice board is worth the money. But this spray has been working perfectly for years now on my cheap board.

"Would you buy monitors that ghosted if your programmers typed the "wrong" letter combinations?"

No, but that's not analogous to my experience.

Given that my company had more time than money, the DIY boards worked really well for the time, cost, and effort, and the value we got out of them.

Sometimes good enough really is good enough.

No reason it has to cost that much; just get it from someone else. Dry erase and chalkboard paint is not new, you can pick it up at hardware stores for like $20/qt.

Which hardware stores and what's the name of the paint ? A link to an online store item would be the best.

Found it myself - http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=128&sid=2411... - and it is indeed something like $20 for 50 sqft of coverage.

Also, see this thread for more info on the subject - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=583521

Wow, thats a much better product. I can afford that one. Thanks!

I could never get a straight answer about the melamine. Some people claimed it had bad ghosting, others said it was fine. Also the people at Lowes had NO IDEA what I was talking about when I tried to find it. (That was an exercise in futility!)

I've done melamine white boards several times and they always ghost.

Short answer: yes, it ghosts. But it's not that bad.

Certain markers are better than others. And rubbing alcohol or other strong cleaners will clean it up pretty well.

At $12 for 4'x8' it's hard to go wrong if you're on a budget. You could even replace it every so often once the ghosting gets bad.

> hundreds of dollars per wall

I've looked at using this paint, and from what I've read, it requires non-trivial skills to put on the walls evenly. I.e. it is very easy to screw up.

I'm thinking of doing my home office and maybe even some of my furniture. I'm pretty handy around the house, but not an expert...what's this skill I need?

I think it said somewhere that a professional painter with an experience applying this specific paint type was recommended. I'm guessing the paint is simply more viscous and it needs to be applied quickly and uniformly.

Hmm... kind of off topic, but just realized a DIY idea offshoot from this.

    Plane of Glass
    UV reactive Dry/Wet Erase Marker
    UV Light From the Back or along glass edges

You could get those UV LEDs and embed them in the edges of the glass.

I've seen something like this in restaurants before. They have some kind of grease-pencil/crayon and a black-backed pane of glass that's lit with UV light. It glows pretty nicely. Does anyone know what this is exactly?

There's magnetic primer, too, so you could have a magentic whiteboard wall with two layers of paint. Here's one of many sources:

http://www.lyt.com/servlet/the-Magnetic-Paint/Categories

(Don't know what a room with iron-shavings magnetic walls does for cellphone reception, though.)

Cool. You could do all your brainstorming in a Faraday Cage which would keep out Magneto and lightning (not to mention phone calls from your wife! ;-)

Thanks for making me laugh!

Imagine if magnetic, writeable walls had been a common thing in offices 40 years ago. I wonder what desktop computing would have ended up like?

Last year, I tried many different dry erase surfaces, including dry erase paint and many alternative treatments of showerboard. I even tried dry erase paint buffed onto a showerboard panel. Surprisingly, this was worse than the melanine alone.

After a couple weeks of testing, my conclusion was that plain showerboard and a Mr Clean dry erase pad for an eraser was the best solution for a ghost free, cost-effective dry erase board.

Perhaps the dry erase pad will eventually wear down the showerboard, but it hasn't so far, and they're super cheap to replace.

Did you try just straight glass?

No, I wanted to cover the 16 x 8 foot surface of one wall in my apartment, so that wouldn't have been practicable in my case.

If you aren't able to paint a wall, you can grab a 8' x 4' sheet of Melamine from Home Depot (or similar), which works quite well as a whiteboard. It isn't as robust as the expensive whiteboards, but can be replaced as-needed since it's so cheap.

A four-by-eight sheet of formica is a lot cheaper than that "paint" too ($3.99 per square foot??). For that matter you can often find whiteboards on sale for less than that paint.

Not surprising, since the paint is better than an actual whiteboard: it fits arbitrary, irregularly-shaped spaces, and doesn't itself take up space.

The thin panels from home depot are cheap -- ~$12 last I checked -- but don't erase nearly as well as a high-quality whiteboard surface, especially if you leave writing up for a while.

So if you're propping whiteboards against the wall of your flophouse while you hack, they're great. If you want something for permanent installation, you get what you pay for.

Good idea, but if you're erasing often, you will have funny colored carpets in a hurry.

Not if you paint it on the floor!

I would love to see a room with nothing but the paint. Floors, walls, ceilings, door. No furniture. My future conference room?

Would be seriously cool if there is no gravity.

As a sci-fi writer, I thank you. My next story will include astronauts floating about in a big, hollow sphere room, writing on the walls.

Do we get a free copy of the chapter?

Well, I would hope a sample text at least. Free advertising.

Wow that is awesome! Thank you.

Orson Scott Card, is that you?

don't forget a nice way of dealing with the fumes.. that could get kinda trippy in zero g without good ventilation

Right. This is what's going into my notes (bit less Hard in science than originally possible, but I figure it's not any more than 20 or 30 years of technological progress, so not a particular sin against writing):

A ship/station/other space-bound facility can have "meditation rooms." These are simply spherical glass rooms exposed to space on the outside, with no artificial gravity. The glass is either permanently semi-frosted white, or, if the technological level of the facility permits, can vary itself from completely clear, through frosted, until completely solid in any color (or pattern) you wish. The adaptively-colored walls can thus be used as fully-surround 3D movie "projector". The air circulation in the room causes you to tend slowly toward the center, then float—rotating slowly—in silence. The room also comes with many different kinds of writing/drawing/painting utensils, for the whole of the "bubble" can be used as a large whiteboard (it can be zapped clean in an instant, no matter how indelible the instrument used to mark it). Because of this, these rooms are also frequently used for group brainstorming—and paintball.

if you paint it on the floor, you'll have funny-colored feet in a hurry

There's only one answer to that: paint it on your shoes!

And soon the whole word is one huge whiteboard.

We've used this stuff all over our coworking space:

http://www.magicwhiteboard.co.uk/

Might be worth giving it a try before investing in paint. It sticks to almost anything through static cling.

I second the magic whiteboard. It will static cling to anything, including the ceiling!

It comes in a carrying box, like cling film. So you can easily take it to client sites and stick it on their wall/glass.

Further, you do not have to erase them, you can just stick a fresh one ontop. In that respect it is more like Butchers Paper.

You know what would be cool? IdeaPaint on a car! Why restrict yourself to a few bumper stickers...now your wife can write the grocery list on your car door! ;-)

"Why restrict yourself to a few bumper stickers...now your wife can write the grocery list on your car door!"

I'm not sure if this would be cool. If you imagine some of the potential shopping lists, I wouldn't want to be the guy advertising his sundries to everyone he drives past.

  * Tampons
  * Hemorrhoid Cream
  * Milk

Ouch! Just use RTM instead :)

... and have to take your car door with you into the supermarket?

I remember seeing Fog Creek use glass whiteboards. I keep meaning to get some made, and I don't like the idea of writing all the walls. Just found a link to a photo:

http://picasaweb.google.com/spolsky/FogCreekSNewOffice#52853...

This whiteboard product from Rustoleum looks very similar http://www.rustoleum.com/CBGProduct.asp?pid=128 Note related the blackboard and magnetic paints.

In NZ there is an alternative paint solution, Resene Aquapoxy in Black White, though perhaps not as neat - as it requires a solvent to clean it off. see article NB pdf http://www.resene.co.nz/homeown/habitat/pdf/paintnotpaint.pd...

I really like this paint. Probably not entire room, but a single wall should be justifiable. Just don't forget the wall.

If this gets cheaper maybe we can paint the Sydney train stations with it. I "admired" graffiti art as a child of hiphop, but Sydney will make you wanna go slaughter anyone with a spray can. The vandals have touched every surface of all train stations :-(

I tossed this out there the last time this came up. Good for parties:http://www.flickr.com/photos/ojbyrne/3221346015/

you got to love how they labelled the cans with "this" and "that"

http://www.ideapaint.com/site/products_work.html

$3.99 per square foot...Or you could get chalkboard paint in black or green for about $0.60 per square foot, maybe less if you shop around.

I've seen the "blackboard" paint for children's playrooms, but this is awesome. I prefer this to the static whiteboard sheets I've seen.

I have an odd feeling white rustoleum would do exactly the same thing...

I tried a test patch of that once: gloss white rustoleum. It actually worked for short term writing, but would absorb marker left on for more than a few hours.

Thats great, its just too expensive for my taste at $4 a square foot.

What if your wall(s) have texture?

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