Thread: Cheap Mirror walls?

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Hi, I am doing a haunted house for my daughters school again this year. I want to do a room that is made of mirrors, with a strobe in it, and a clown. However I'm not sure of a good way to make the walls. I tried to do it last year with reflective emergency blankets on a frame, but they weren't very mirror like. Does anyone know of a better way to do this? I have a very small budget to work with, otherwise I would just go out and buy a bunch of mirrored closet doors.
Thanks in advance

Some use that plastic/foil wrapping paper. The front has a Christmas or birthday design but most have plain foil on the back. Even this won't be cheap though. Tin foil won't hold up very well but would probably not be as expensive. It should work for one night.

These are often called Baked Potato rooms (because you wrap a baked potato on aluminum foil). Some of them use a person wearing the same material as the walls are made of, a variation on the Dot Room. The strobe light makes it very disorienting.

Hey, thanks for the reply. How reflective is the wrapping papper? I haven't found alluminum foil to be very mirror like.

Ever thought about using mirrored privacy window film? Highly reflective and if carefully hung and rolled up can be used year after year.

I have thought about window film. It's kind of expensive though. Would I need anything behind it?

I haden't heard of a dot room before, but I was planning something for another room which turns out to be the same thing. i was going to have a room with black walls, floor and ceiling with a pattern painted on them with flourescent paint. Then I was going to have an actress in a tight black outfit with a matching pattern on it. Would doing both be too much of the same thing?

There is a guy on the forum building a really cool Carnival set. He posted this under the "Prop" forum. I copied it because I was going to try to do one as well. His post is labeled "Aggressive Carnival Build" or something like that. Here is what he posted (his post also shows pics):

Basically just spray the board and the wrapping paper, wait 30 seconds, then have your helper hold up one end while you apply the film to the board. The mirror isn't perfectly flat, there is some texture to it but not so much that it ruins the effect. Once the board dries a couple of hours you can bend it (doesn't take much) in pretty much any funhouse mirror configuration and mount it into your frame. Once I build the frames I'll probably do a tutorial on how to do them. Like I said.. they aren't perfect but as you can see.. for a grand total of $23 (not counting the frame).

You could probably also stretch the plastic over a frame and tweak that.

Oops it didn't copy everything. Here you go:

This funhouse mirror was made from a 50ftx24 inch roll of mirror plastic wrapping paper ($5.99), a 4x8 sheet of 1/8 inch hardboard ($9) cut into 2x4 strips and a can of super 77 spray adhesive ($8).

Basically just spray the board and the wrapping paper, wait 30 seconds, then have your helper hold up one end while you apply the film to the board. The mirror isn't perfectly flat, there is some texture to it but not so much that it ruins the effect. Once the board dries a couple of hours you can bend it (doesn't take much) in pretty much any funhouse mirror configuration and mount it into your frame. Once I build the frames I'll probably do a tutorial on how to do them. Like I said.. they aren't perfect but as you can see.. for a grand total of $23 (not counting the frame).

You could probably also stretch the plastic over a frame and tweak that.

I'm using reflective mylar sheeting. Comes in a 3ft wide roll in 25, 50 or 100 feet. If you have a local hydroponics shop, they are likely to have it. Not sure what they use it for. It comes in 1 or 2mm thickness. I got 2mm and it seems to work well so far. Not a perfect mirror look, but pretty close. You can probably find a better deal than in this link, but it give you an idea of what to look for.
http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/...cStoreNum=6542

I was looking at that too. It looks a lot like the emergency blankets I used last year. Does it heat shrink?