The blackest black paint ever

I'm sure this is where your computer monitor is a limiting factor in seeing what this paint really looks like.  Unfortunately, I have never seen this tint in person, lol.

@unsound

I've seen examples of cars painted this way and it is scary, just like you mentioned.  Since this black is tuned for visible light, not sure how well it does outside that spectrum.

https://www.hotcars.com/vantablack-car-paint-facts/

I’m curious as to how impervious this new ultimate black would be to LIDAR? While, it might help avoid speeding tickets, it might also increase the chances of being killed by inattentive operators of self driving vehicles.

Thanks for mentioning this new black erik.  Hope they make progress.

Black is NOT black. I worked for ten years in a huge printing company and when I wanted a trailer custom-matched to the black of my Goldwing, any body shop that said, "Oh, black is black" I just said goodbye and left.

This stuff would have be great for my theater walls to absorb light reflected from the screen, if I want to repaint them. The four walls and ceiling are pure matte black but light from the screen still bounces off too much for me.

The most interesting black product I've seen was a projector screen Sony showed at CES one year, around 2002 or so.  The screen looked extremely dark in ordinary room light because it absorbed almost all light except the precise wavelength of the red green blue projection from a video projector.  I don't know if part of the trick involved the polarization of the light source as well as the wavelength.  It was quite amazing how vibrant the image looked under lighting that would have made any other front projection image look washed out.

I believe the Sony screen never made it to market.  It was supposedly very expensive to make, brittle (so the screen cannot roll up) and people hated the look of a big black screen on the wall (I guess they never considered some kind of cover or valance).

What all these articles have in common is that while the reflected color spectrum may be the same across all true blacks, the total amount of reflected light is NOT.

What we called black in 2010 still had quite a bit of light reflectivity compared to the latest stealth blacks.

Sorry, I posted the same link twice. What I meant to post was a 2019 article about MIT’s own research into the subject:

https://www.cnet.com/news/mit-unveils-new-blackest-black-material-and-makes-a-diamond-disappear/

I had an arts and crafts friend actually point me to this black coating.  I totally agree with Eric that not all black is created equal.  I had been trying to find a really good non-reflective coating for some wood boxes.  However, none of the finishes I tried really did what I wanted. 

The "clearbase" that iceageaudio tries to tell us is the only black is likely a combination of polyeurathane and a form of black dye.  This ends up being either gloss black or flat black.  Obviously, gloss black is highly reflective and ends up being very much like a mirror.  I have a B&W D3 speaker that i have to cover with a towel because it's piano black is so highly reflective that I am seeing a mirror image of my projected movie, lol.

The flat black paint I ended up going with still had a level of reflectivity which still caused problems because the box was so close to the edge of the screen - it was reflecting light from the screen.

This BLK 3.0 or Vanta Black type compound may have been the best solution, but at $22 for a small bottle, I was worried about how much I would have had to buy. lol.

The blacker the better. 

Man, people would rather knee jerk than read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack


https://news.artnet.com/art-world/anish-kapoor-vantablack-exclusive-rights-436610


https://www.surreynanosystems.com/news-media/videos


This is not your standard coatings industry black, because the black you thought was black in 2010 is not actually black enough. Please read and enjoy.

Further, others are trying to get even blacker

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack

Not to oversimplify it, but there is only "1" black colorant made for the entire paint/dye industry, and it's called lamp black.  And all black paints are made from a clear base, and that goes for any type of paint produced.  So, unless the clear base is milky to begin with, or there is some other colorant in the mix...BLACK IS BLACK.  If your base is truly clear, and you're using lamp black only, you can't get any blacker.  Now...not to confuse anyone, but ALL paints start as a clear, then white is added and color bases are created from that.  How do I know this...39 years in the industry it's amazing what you learn.

It's like how much more black could that be? The answer is none. None more black.

IF you look hard enough, eventually you will find (see ) Schrodinger’s cat

only the serious will understand this

of course this is science based, not the stuff of faux fantasy

look to the deep sea fish if you want to understand black

It's not just the blackness that matters, but also the degree of lack of reflectivity (sheen). Krylon offers a model named "Ultra Flat Black", catalog no.1602. It's like a black hole! 

Black for me is a lava tube with the lights out.

That is at least as black as the Stewart Filmscreen black velour screen border fabric used here. https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/8367 Plus costs less, and goes on a lot easier. 

The Stewart material is so black the projector can shine right on it and you can't see it, at least not from viewing distance. Makes for a real quality viewing experience. Cool stuff. 

Hmmm...you could use it to paint the edge of CD's.

I actually heard about a high end car, maybe a Mercedes, that was painted with a new super black paint and the writer was saying that the look was amazing and hard to put into words.