My girlfriend was telling me that her high-school science teacher once told her this, I think he was smoking crack.
He said movie theaters often paint the doors going into theater screens red, because that is the easiest colour for your eyes to switch to night vision from.
Is this true? I was at our local movie theater yesterday (Cineplex Odeon) with her and all the doors were black.
Is there truth to this?
MtM
The local theater has the doors to the outside painted red, but not the ones into the theater. My guess is the brief glimpse you’d get of the doors wouldn’t be long enough for your eyes to adjust, anyway. However, I don’t know enough about the matter to give more than conjecture.
The theatre I work at has turquoise doors. The LED lights inside the theatre that let you see where you’re walking when the other lights are dimmed are red, though.
The outside-the-threater doors at the local 20-screen are painted red… but then, the whole building is red and gray.
I do know that red light is relativly safe to use w/ out destroying your night vision. It is used in aviation and astronomy for that reason. (no cite, but check out any aviation or backyard astronomy book. Or catalog, and see all the red LED/flashlights for sale)
But that isn’t quite the same thing as what the OP is saying.
Brian
Long shot WAG: If this is true, perhaps it is so that patrons inside the cinema, already watching the film, will at most see a red door when someone enters halfway through the main feature; if the door were painted white then they would see a distracting flash of white, if it were painted black, people might have problems seeing it as they walk through.