Glowing Dot Room

This is an easy project for your yard during Halloween.  Kids really love it.

A Glowing Dot Room is a room painted black with multi-colored glowing dots on all of the walls.  A black light fixture is mounted to the ceiling.  This room has a happy or fanciful feeling.  An added bonus is that kids can experience the effects of a black light on their clothes as well.  If you have a larger dot room, you can put an actor in the room completely covered in black with matching dots.  If you have the actor stand against the wall, he is barely noticeable until he moves.  This trick works well on adults and children.  Another modification is to put a mirror in the room so that kids can see themselves.

Glowing Dot Rooms can be made to be permanent or temporary.  Some can be folded up and stored.  Components can be made out of a variety of materials you may already have, so costs should be low.  The following description shows how to make a temporary structure that can be disassembled and stored in a very small space.  But the instructions can be easily converted to a more permanent structure.

Construction (temporary, storable):

Main Structure:  Start with an inexpensive canopy made for camping.  The one we used was 10' x 10'.  These come in a storage bag and are easy to assemble and disassemble.

Walls:  Walls can be made out of black plastic sheeting sold at most department stores or hardware stores.  Make sure that it is thick enough to be durable.  We used 6 mil because it was cheap and thick enough to do the job.  Cut your plastic to exactly match your walls  Do not leave overhang.  Also cut plastic to cover the ceiling.  The plastic must be completely opaque.

Dots:  Go to an office supply store and purchase white "price stickers".  These are round paper circles with a sticky back usually sold for pricing items in a yard sale.  They usually come in fluorescent colors and white.  In our first glow room just used the fluorescent colors without any additional paint, but the colors got washed out in the black light.  They also do not glow as bright as our new dots.  So purchase the white dots.  They should be about $2 for 500.  You will need 2 packs.

Dot Painting:  Cover your work area.  This is a great opportunity to use that left over black plastic.  You will need to purchase our Glow Paint in one or more colors.  Now, cover the price stickers with paint.  Do not worry about being detailed, just slop it on.  Make several pages of various colors.  Let the dots dry thoroughly.

Dot Sticking:  This is a great part of the project to share with your kids.  Lay out the walls on a large surface or the floor.  Peel the stickers from their backing and place them in a random fashion on the plastic.  Stickers should be about 2-5 inches from each other.  Make sure you mix up the colors.  As one of our dot room makers says "Don't think about it, just stick".  Do not stick dots to the ceiling pieces.

Wall Hanging:  The walls can be easily taped to the canopy with clear packaging tape.  This tape is strong, but can later be easily removed.  Use lots of tape so that the walls are strong.  Remember, if it is outside, you will have to make it strong enough to stand up in wind.  Also make sure to completely seal the walls together.  You do not want any light sneaking in.  We had to make a "patch" for one wall that was cut a little short.

Door:  By now you realize that you do not have any access to get in and out.  Use a pair of scissors to cut a slit in one side as a door.  More advanced dot rooms use techniques such as overlapping plastic to prevent the light from sneaking through this opening.

Ceiling:  The plastic for the ceiling is only used to cover the non-opaque tarp.  We simply threw the plastic over and taped it down.  Remember, you do not want any outside light source sneaking through.

Lighting:  It only takes a small black light to make our paint glow very brightly.  We used plastic cable ties to mount our black light to the ceiling of the canopy.  You can either use a battery powered black light or use dark extension cords for power.