Color scheme of haunt?

[Matt Colton]

I have been to many haunts in my lifetime and there are thousands of differences in the moody color scheme of a haunt. For example, colored lights or darkness, bright colors or dirty brown rotten, natural colors. I agree that red blue and green lights do really emphisize an emotion like red=violence, green= creepy and blue=cold I can't help but say that a very natural dim and dark brown decaying color scheme really seems more real and scary. For example the "House of Horrors and Haunted Catacombs" in Buffalo NY abided to this rule. When you walked into the backyard of the house there were no artifical colored lights, just decaying dark rot everywhere, brown withered bodies and dead trees with some creepy dim candle light in the windows and lightning periodically. You didn't see much but when you did boy did you wish you hadn't. Adds a bit more suspence and cover for people and "things" lurking around the room. I'm, not talking pitch blackness but just a very natrual effect of brown decay and dim lights that dont give off to much bright color. Anybody else agree with this or am I just crazy. (Notice in my walkthrough video I did not do any of this and actually did the polar oppisite with green light :P)

[Jim Warfield]

Maybe It Depends Upon...

..what color you dream in?
Bad dreams? Happy dreams? Colorfull? No color?
A black and white set might be able to create a more dreamlike state of mind if your dreams seem to be just black & white?
I painted my coffin hallway off-white because I thought it would accomplish this , and it has for many people. I can hear every word they say from the farthest end of it...."Why, this is just like being in a dream!"
The old , natural colors of quarried stones, "glued" together with 140 year old yellow mortar is the look the basement naturally has here along with the impressive wine cellar and I would never try to change that.
The exterior of my house has a "Spooked" Victorian paint job,numerous bright colors on the trim at the highest parts turning light grey to dark grey to flat black at the lowest part, hopefully creating a "floating" look at night. A tall Italianate 1880 house "Floating", quite a dreamlike concept, huh?
Then all the car bodies are being sucked into the black vortex in a random pattern along with other stuff.
The grape vines hide alot of the house now but by the second week of October the leaves leave the vine and the part left looks like veins and arteries wrapped around everything.
Right now the vine helps keep the house cooler but it is always needing trimming and it draws some insect life and requires sweeping up it's microscopic crud too, but it's worth it.

[Matt Colton]

Very good example

Wow Jim that has actually given me a few good ideas! I really like the "Dream" reference! I know I have a long way before I open a pro haunt but talking with pros like you really fills my idea meter to the extreme. And the black and white also is a great approach. I think though that to much color can ruin the life likeness of a scene. Shades are fine but full on artificial colors (mostly lights) kind of sucks the reality away. Not to mention the lack of vibrant colors also adds a sort of more dramatic presence. Like I always say, Dark blacker blood is better than pure red

[Jim Warfield]

Wouldn't blacker blood mean it's older? Like from a corpse? Nastier.....??

[Matt Colton]

Could be but also when its a very dark red with some black tint in it, it simulates blood in a large quantity

[Jim Warfield]

If you really want to scare someone

with phoney blood, have a drip valve hooked up to the tank in the public rest room.
"Blood in my stool!"???
How real do you want the scare?

[Matt Colton]

Nothing is more horrifying than finding blood in your stool. Very gruesome idea jim