Buying land, building a house, planning for a real darkroom!

My wife finally agreed to buy an acre (or more?) of rural land across the sound from Tacoma in a place called Purdy Washington. We're going to wind up on septic but there will be plenty of room for a good drain field. I've started planning the project to include a heated, plumbed, and electrified workshop attached to the home. I'll have my darkroom and office out there. I intend to make it possible to black out the whole building so I can make the darkroom as big as it needs to be.

I want my dry side to have cabinets, enlarger table, print mounting, and framing area. The wet side will have a big sink for washing prints and film. What I don't know about yet is if I can find stainless steel sinks. I've thought about buying the dishwashing sinks from a restaurant that is going out of business or perhaps having them fabricated. Not sure yet.

My enlarger is an Omega D2 and I can print from negatives as large as 4x5. I was hoping to find an 8x10 enlarger some day since I also shoot on 8x10 film. An Elwood would be fun but those things are freaking huge and heavy as snot. I have enlarger lenses and negative carriers for 35mm. 6x4.5, 6x6, 6x7, 6x9, and 4x5".

Has anyone else ever done a project like this? How much over your budget did you go? If you stayed on budget, how did you do it? I've seen (and perhaps have) at least one book that includes chapters on darkroom design. These books are great but perhaps, the equipment and layout is a tad overkill for me now. I won't retire and start working in my darkrooom full-time for about 4-5 years. When I do, I am hoping to make a few good friends who share my love of photography. I anticipate a few afternoon/evenings monthly where a few of us gather to work and perhaps enjoy drinks and music while we work.

I am also an audiophile and intend to put one of my systems in the workroom along with a few hundred of my records and music streamer. The sound quality will be second to none - hope.

There are a few of us Appugers in the Seattle/Tacoma area and I hope we can finally get together. You folks from BC are extremely welcome to come for a visit when this thing is put together. It will happen as I've already got the funds put aside for the whole land/house/workroom/darkroom project and most importantly, I have the permission from my lovely wife. I've been wanting to do this project for 30 years. Now it can finally happen! I really want to share the experience with new friends.

Oh, I expect that the acreage will support visitors who drive in with RVs or want to camp. I'm not sure the house will have room for more than 1-2 guests.

I'll post in this thread as plans crystalize and I meet project milestones.

Good luck with your project.
I've only put darkrooms in existing spaces, so the design options were more limited than yours. I prefer keeping my matting/mounting/framing equipment in a separate room. I also store my paper in the next room, to avoid problems with toning fog. I'd also suggest building the largest sink you can. Never enough sink space...
I've never dealt with a septic system, but you might want to invest in a good silver recovery unit to avoid leaching silver.

Sounds like a great project. I'd agree with Eddie that sink space and counter space in general is very important. I've reduced the amount of gear in my fairly compact darkroom so I have more space for film loading, mixing solutions etc.

Sounds good, realizing the dream is still a long way off though. If you are planning on an 8x10 enlarger, plan on a 10 foot ceiling (or more). If you have the budget for custom fabbed SS sinks great, or you can make them from wood and seal with resin or urethane bed liner. Good luck with the build.

I approve and encourage your project it sounds like you're planning it down to the nitty-gritty details.

I installed a good sound system in my own recently completed darkroom: good Onkyo Receiver with capability to stream through my iPod/iPad, CD, Tape Deck and JBL speakers. Printing and listening to my favorite music is truly a pleasure.

Good luck and keep us posted on the progress.

In the 70 and 80s there were some books on how to design a darkroom, you might want to check thrift books or Amazon to see if you can find one you can use as a start. Oddly, my 1952 Montgomery Wards Photography Catalog has a nice 4 page layout on with floor layouts. .

Being able to build your own darkroom from scratch to suit your needs, is the best. My first two in Japan were in existing rooms (kitchen corner, bedroom). When I came back to Canada, I built a dedicated space under the deck. It's tiny, 8x12', but has served me well for almost 20 years. Good luck, and I look forward to following your progress.

I recommend that you move the print mounting and framing area outside of the darkroom--a separate workroom would be nice for that. Also, plan for storage outside of the darkroom for a refrigerator for film and paper as well as dry storage for lenses--away from humidity, fungus, and fumes that can damage lenses. Do not install upper cabinets on a good section of the dry side, as you need space to raise the enlargers and room to doge/burn in.

When I built a darkroom, I found an Arkay fiberglass sink that fit nicely--7 ft x 30 inches x 6 deep. Arkay also offers stainless steel sinks--B&H Photovideo shows many of the options.

For the walls, I recommend white--might as well make it a cheerful room. If your enlarger leaks light, fix the leak. Make the countertops of gray laminate. I figure most of the things I put on the counter are either white (paper) or black (dodging tools) and gray lets you see a contrast. I found cheap track lighting at Home Depot and mounted the tracks high on the walls, with the reflectors pointing at the ceiling which gave a very even diffuse lighting free of shadows.

At first I had a Thomas sodium vapor safelight, but it was too bright and fogged my paper. I found an Aristo red gas discharge tube safelight used at a bargain price and it works fine. I prefer the red light to the yellow. If you add a small OC or equivalent safelight (even a very dim one), the 2 colors (red and amber) let you distinguish colors to a degree, if that matters.

In designing a new darkroom for a house that I may be able to have built, I came up with a 14 ft long galley by 9 wide that seems like it might be big enough. But I have a Zone VI 5x7 enlarger, as well as 2 LPL enlargers (4x5 and 6x7) as well as a few more. The 5x7 is big enough that I wouldn't want to have to move it, so it takes about 3 ft of counter space just to sit there.

Please reconsider, unless you are planning to do it on previously developed land. Millions of acres of agricultural and forest land have been permanently lost to residential development in Western Washington alone in the past several decades alone. Developing raw land for homes is unnecessary and environmentally damaging.

Wayne said:

Please reconsider, unless you are planning to do it on previously developed land. Millions of acres of agricultural and forest land have been permanently lost to residential development in Western Washington alone in the past several decades alone. Developing raw land for homes is unnecessary and environmentally damaging.

Click to expand...

Killjoy.

Wayne said:

Please reconsider, unless you are planning to do it on previously developed land. Millions of acres of agricultural and forest land have been permanently lost to residential development in Western Washington alone in the past several decades alone. Developing raw land for homes is unnecessary and environmentally damaging.

Click to expand...

You're funny.

Wayne said:

Please reconsider, unless you are planning to do it on previously developed land. Millions of acres of agricultural and forest land have been permanently lost to residential development in Western Washington alone in the past several decades alone. Developing raw land for homes is unnecessary and environmentally damaging.

Click to expand...

Just as soon as humans develop sufficient intelligence to achieve zero population growth, that request will be a reasonable one. In the meantime, anyone with the means to escape ever-increasing crowding and build a home on a large lot in a low-density area is wise. I'm also in the process of doing that. Life's too short, and the pleasure of it decreasing too quickly from the pressure of too many people, to deny oneself.

Kudos to those who haven't procreated. Not adding to the problem is laudable.

Good luck with your project and trust everything will turn out fine. I Had my darkroom built in the garden of my house. As you know the sort of image making you wish to do, it will make it easier to design it with that in mind. The reason I mention this is because I sometimes experiment with alternative photographic processes and could therefore write that into the design.

To help your budget, I would suggest you use Polypropylene inset sinks which you can drop into a wooden frame. Are you also having a stone/tiled floor, less vibration and easier to clean? With my smaller Durst enlarger, I bolted it to the wall for better stability. Also make sure all table and sink heights are optimised for someone of your height, as opposed to standard table height. For ceiling lighting, I switch between red sleeved fluorescent and white fluorescents.

A good old, much used resource from Kodak:
https://125px.com/docs/techpubs/kodak/ak3.pdf

I just finished such a project. I bought an acre and a half, designed and built the new house (finished the house this past June and moved in), then finished off the remainder of the darkroom that I didn't do as part of the main construction (got all of the structural things done as part of construction including flooring, drywall, plumbing, electrical, vending, and painting), the rest I did afterwards (cabinets, sink, etc). Doing it that way minimized the budget creep after construction. The only other difference is I built my new dedicated darkroom and finishing area as part of the back basement. I'm also on well. You might read through the Darkroom Portraits Part 2 thread - there a a few of us that have recently done the same and discussed various aspects of the projects and pictures along the way.

I bought a few darkroom books off of eBay cheap - they all pretty much cover the same basic layouts and considerations for wet-side/dry-side and other issues - nothing many of us ancients didn't know 50 years ago when I set up my very first darkroom, but was fun to review nevertheless. Today there are things one can improve upon from the days of old re: air filtering, dust control, venting, temp control, disposal, and so on. A lot of my expense beyond the structure went into convenience, comfort, and automation. Having had to live with sub-standard darkrooms all my life I wrote a complete list (plan) covering every aspect of darkroom problems and challenges I wanted solved with the new space before I even got started with construction and how I was going to solve each - and did. Did I make any mistakes along the way? Yup - it's inevitable even with the best planning, but they were minor and could be dealt with.

Regards,
Mike

Mmmmm, sounds wonderful...separate wet and dry sides...the stuff dreams are made of.
My wet side is the bath tub.
Looking forward to periodic photos of the project.

As long as you are doing it from scratch, make sure you make it all big enough. If I were going to build a darkroom from scratch I'd build a huuuuuge sink. Multiple water outlets. Space to make large prints if I ever wanted to. The difference in cost would be minimal in the end. Last thing you'd want is wishing you made it bigger, especially if you plan on spending a lot of time in there. The other thing I would do is build a light trap so I didn't need to use a door. Of course that depends where you are going to put it. I'd also probably have a center island. Those come in handy. You could make it moveable if you wanted. If you plan on making large prints, you may want to plan for a horizontal enlarger. Much easier to use. Make sure you get enough ventilation too. I'd also put in some type of HEPA unit so I could clear the air in a few minutes if I wanted to load film. No dust! You also might consider a dehumidifier/humidifier to keep the environment comfortable. Also consider a non fatigue material on the floor.

Hope that helps.

Great project! Enjoy.

I would suggest thinking about reasonably accessible plumbing, in case of needing to make changes or deal with maintenance issues etc.

Are you going to be using it alone, or are you going to be doing demonstrations or sharing it.
If there are going to be lots of people in there at one time, a central sink for trays that can be approached from 3 sides is great.
A rolling cart with room for a paper cutter on top and paper safe drawers is great too.

Pay attention to min-spec on accessibility standards, and then exceed them. You may never used them for wheelchair access, but your back and knuckles will eventually thank you when it comes to lugging stuff in and out of the building. Walkways, ramps, and parking designed for easy wheelchair access can readily double as drop-freight access if you ever end up ordering some stupidly heavy enlarger or other bit of equipment. This may also come in handy if you're looking to host events.


Consider splitting your darkroom waste water system from the rest of the home's waste water system. If you can avoid mixing dark room waste with your household bio-waste, then you also avoid any of the risks of killing off the beneficial biologicals.

An accident that contaminates a dedicated darkroom waste water disposal is going to be easier to address than one which also contaminates your septic system.

Patrick Robert James said:

Last thing you'd want is wishing you made it bigger, especially if you plan on spending a lot of time in there.

Click to expand...

However, be careful with 'bigger is better' when planning a work space and the risks of getting carried away. Whenever I get a chance I like to model things out in full scale and start asking myself questions about how the space will be used in real life.

Plan your workflows, and actually walk through the actions of them. A giant room on paper might bring thoughts of "Look at all the room for activities!", but those happy thoughts might fade rather quickly if you're constantly walking back and forth across a 50 foot room.

If you build heavy workbenches and stuff then Toe Jacks are worth the investment. Doesn't take much of a design change to have heavy stable tables that don't go anywhere when you don't want them, but are still easy to jack up and shuffle around if you find a workspace configuration doesn't really do its job.

Luckless said:

However, be careful with 'bigger is better' when planning a work space and the risks of getting carried away. Whenever I get a chance I like to model things out in full scale and start asking myself questions about how the space will be used in real life.

Click to expand...

I suspect this also may depend on the size of equipment in your darkroom. I have two De Vere models set up, a 5108 floor standing, and a 504 bench top; I could easily use a darkroom twice the size of what I have. Obviously UK / European standards of space are probably different compared to more remote locations in North America.

You'll need a silver recovery unit, or you'll kill your septic system. A number of other darkroom chemicals could also be a problem. If you're planning on a large space, I recommend having some removable internal darkroom walls to totally isolate the sink room from where the enlarger is, or where film and paper are stored, or from the drymounting area. The humidity and fumes in traditional setups are certainly not ideal. I zippered in plates with removable tapcon screws, and used corrugated fiberglass panels for lightweight walls. That system is also nice if you eventually sell the property and someone else wants to convert it back into a more open room for something else.

Looks like you are getting a lot of with project, so I’ll just wish the best of luck!

Wow! You guys have some great insights. I haven't posted photos of my current darkroom because clearly, I didn't think of your insights when I put my darkroom together 20 years ago. Of course, if you look at my prints, you'll think "poor John, 20 years of crap photos" Yep, and you'd be right. As I read your suggestions and think about how those improvements would change my workflow, I realize that my negatives are not that bad. The execution in print has been hampered by poor workflow driven by wrong and actually nasty workspace.

Matt: Yes, I do intend to have multiple people in the darkroom doing work in something like a workshop setting. While I may not be the workshop lead for a couple of years (until my craft catches up to master status), I envision the space as a place where teaching can be done if the class is limited to about 5 people.

This is kind of a life-work kind of project. I do other stuff for a living but creating a center (even if it is not an very important one) for photographic expression is one of about two things I will do to make my existence complete. Yeah, that's big stuff but that's where my head and heart are.