The Darker Side of Screen Printing.

This tutorial will show you how to set up your dark room, or dark corner if that’s all you have.

Setting up your dark room so that you can coat and dry screens without risking exposure to light is actually very straight forward and simple. And you don’t need a lot of space. When I had my large studio I was able to put a 10′x8′ darkroom under the loft. I draped a wall of blackout fabric and had a curtained off area as you stepped inside so when you went in and turned on the safety light you could close the blackout curtain behind you. Thus keeping out the light as you came and went in the darkroom. Now that I am running my business in the smaller (much smaller) confines of my house I have set-up my darkroom in a space that is now a corner of a storage room using about 4′x3′ of space. Nice thing is, I can tell you from experience that there is no difference between my pro darkroom and my at home version in the quality of my screen stencils. The difference really is that the first one cost thousands to set up and the second cost nothing. So if you are an at home crafter you will be able to achieve pro quality prints even at home as long as you follow a few simple rules for your new darkroom.The things you need in a darkroom:

In my larger darkroom I had the space to build a rack to slide my screens into to let them dry. I used really large screens (37″x47″) and so this was a big help. Screens ideally should be left to dry with the print side up and horizontal. You don’t need a rack to dry screens though. All you need are small spacers that you can put under the corners of your screens so they are elevated off the floor (bottle caps, small wood shims, small jar lids, etc.). You can use spacers to stack and dry screens on top of one another too (although, this does make it take longer for them to dry). I have to admit that in my new space I don’t always have the room to dry screens flat so they often dry leaning against a wall. I make sure that I have put on a nice even coat of emulsion that’s not too thick so I don’t have to worry about it dripping down the screens and causing one side to be thicker than the other. It’s recommended that you let your screens dry in a completely dark room for about eight hours. You can use a fan to help speed up the process. If you don’t have great ventilation a dehumidifier is a big help too. Keep the room cool as well and never use a heated fan to dry the screens- it may activate the emulsion and begin to harden it. 

Happy printing!