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.
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.
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?
...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.
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.
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'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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 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.
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.