Hey guys, just trying to get the general consensus. Been a Power Host on here for quiet some time with over 100 reviews. I own and operate a photography studio that has a white cyclorama. (white floor and walls) As anyone who has one of these studios you know it’s a pain in the butt to always try and keep the floor clean. We have a 2 hour minimum. Alot of clients don’t take the precautions of keeping the floor clean and often we have to repaint. We we getting a booking of more than 6-8 people I know that the floor is going to be trashed and need repainting. We do charge a painting fee if the client requests fresh painted floors but rarely get that request. I usually end up painting the floor once it starts to collect too much foot traffic.
How do you all deal with this? Sometimes I wish I didn’t have a cycwall and cleanup would be so much easier but the wall is one of the highlights of this place and why people rent here. haha.
We have a re-paint fee listed but have never actually charged it. We repaint after every booking that leaves marks but also have a multi-set studio so only half our gusts are there to use the Cyc. We pre-set it with rugs on the floor because 9/10 times guests enter the studio and immediately walk onto the cyc or load their gear on it, the rugs have helped so so much and only get rolled back if they actually need to shoot on the white.
We’re verbal about the rules and politely suggest all crew wear booties to help with keeping “their shoot” easier so no scuffs are in frame. People seem to respond well when it looks like we’re helping them out rather than ourselves
Painting only takes 5 mins for a light coat and 25mins to dry for us so its not too much of a chore. It’s also been a brilliant task to immediately do when guests are lagging with exiting the studio after their booking. Painting makes you look very busy and important so they apologize and scram!
You can adjust pricing per person, and you should, since more people consume more energy and resources, but 3 people can mess your cyc floor up just as easily as 20.
The answer you’re not looking for is:
you repaint every time it gets dirty enough to be a problem
you charge a fresh-coat fee for those who want a pristine cyc and inform them when booking that it is not maintained pristine
you put down a cover between shoots and for shoots that don’t need to see the floor
Ramboard works well, about $60 a roll at Home Depot, for an 18’X24’ cyc it’ll be about 4 rolls. Let it sit out with some stuff on it after you first unroll it so it can flatten, or you can also order ramboard in flats but they cost a bit more.
Even with a covering down, the floor will still get mildly scuffed with time as friction from the covering will slowly polish the top layer of paint, so it won’t be perfect but it will last longer.
Cycs require frequent painting - when we’re in full swing, we repaint 2-3 times per week, and for some clients, 2-3 times per day. If someone is dancing on the green screen stage, we might retouch the floor 2-3 times per hour.
Cheapest, flattest, most readily accessible white paint: Flat interior ultra bright white Behr Premium Plus, NOT ‘exterior flat’ or ‘anti-scuff’ - despite being “flat” or “matte” finish, those paints have 3-4 times the sheen of basic flat interior and will not scatter light on your curve as effectively.
I don’t have a white cycwall in my studio (our floor and walls are black), but I was wondering for short rentals couldn’t you roll out some white seamless paper and ask your clients to stand on the paper if they don’t want to incur extra repainting charges? In our studio the shooting stage is raised up 4" so we can easily put a colored roll of paper on the floor in front and then roll it onto the stage floor. This allows us to have different wall vs floor colors if desired. I’m not saying to do the same, but if you want to paint less often, I thought it was a possible idea. They also have white vinyl backdrops which are easier to mop off marks if you don’t want to waste paper.
We put canvas “tarps” down to protect the floor. We let everyone know that they should try and leave the tarps in place whenever it won’t affect the shoot so it “saves the cove for everyone”. We also charge $100 for “fresh white paint”. Otherwise, the cove may have some LIGHT scuffs on it. We get that fee about 20-30% of the time. In those cases, we paint the floor the night before. We also printed graphics warning folks about cove damage and to wear booties when possible. Everyone has been pretty cool about it. We just are clear up front about it. Let us know if you want graphics like these.
We have 3 studios, and 2 have white cyc walls. We have about 300 total bookings a month and plenty of them are back to back. It would be a nightmare to try to paint after every client!
We use a 2-part epoxy paint that takes a few days to cure, so we only paint it every few months. Every night, the closing staff removes the scuffs by scrubbing them with Faboluso and a magic eraser. When bleach is cheap and easy to get again, we’ll go back to Clorox Cleanup instead of Fabuloso. With nightly scrubbing, it’s easy to get it bright white for the next day’s shoots.
This type of paint doesn’t pick up every bit of dirt, so even on a day when we’ve had 15 hours of bookings, we only need a magic eraser and some elbow grease.
Hi Tiffany,
I am a power host in Philadelphia. I have 3 studios here and I have to say it’s starting to get a bit overwhelming. How do you handle 300 bookings a month? I would live to pick your brain sometime or even visit your studios. That would help me so much.
Hi all! We also have a studio with a cyclorama wall and has to be painted every time we have a client. I used to ask them if they would need it painted and most of the times they do because they “want to have the option to use it”. However the paint/labor is included with the rate. And it does look messy whenever we don’t paint it to be honest.
Tiffany, I’m curious about the epoxy paint you mention… is it a reflective one? Do you ever have problems with clients with that? We always use flat.
Hi, the matte two-part epoxy we use works really well on the floor and the scuffs are easy to clean up every night. We paint flat Kilz on the back wall starting at the top of the cyc wall curve and going up as high as a normal person’s eye level. We rarely get marks on the Kilz, and they clean up easily with a Magic Eraser.
Flat paint picks up scuffs and marks so easily that even a portrait shoot will leave it a hot mess. With the stuff we use, it takes a lot to mark it up (like a dance troupe with dirty shoes). Otherwise, we can go for like 14 hours of back to back shoots and only need to clean it at night.
I had a giant cove cyc in my last studio and we painted a gray area around the edge where it was “safe” to walk. Beyond that, booties were required for all crew. We had signs that said that everywhere, boxes of booties in a few places, and we verbally reinforced the policies with guests upon their arrival/walk-through. At times, we even roped off the cyc for larger groups before they arrived, just to make it clear it was something to be paid attention to. Watching me take down the rope before the rental made an impact as did the visual barrier of the gray border beyond the cyc.
Ultimately though, we charged a $75 (white) painting fee ($150 for anything else except black and red- $200 for the extra work covering those up) for folks that wrecked it. It still needed painting in general,but the fees helped offset the overall cost. Based on the weight of a 5 gal. Bucket of paint, I’m pretty sure our studio caused the earth to sag underneath it by the time we left.
we used to have the same problem, also tried the epoxy, but it had too much shine for my taste and I found the cleaning more tiring then repainting. Best thing I ever invested in, was a made to order waterproof tarp (got mine at tarpsnow . It cost around $200 but saved me so much repainting . Most clients hate added fees, so we priced ours that there is no extra repainting fee, except when they change the color
