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ANGIE'S LIST
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Angie’s List® | September 2006
UNUSUAL SERVICE
Night Sky Murals creates
celestial splendor at home
by Laura Rowlett

To Jeff Stewart, it seems his clients have asked, "How do you do this?" as many times as there are stars in the sky. The founder of Salt Lake City-based Night Sky Murals says 15 years of trial and error -- and a lot of messed-up kids’ rooms -- helped to perfect his process of creating an amazingly realistic sea of stars on just about any ceiling. "I create a clear, moonless night in the middle of the desert, far from city lights," Stewart says. "People just don’t see that anymore."

A California native and father of five, Stewart, 45, has spent the last 20 years honing his craft, making new tools from old ones and improving his recipe for glowing pigment: a nontoxic, photophosphorescent substance mixed with just the right amount of a clear binding fluid. Like any good magician, Stewart won’t reveal his secrets. "When people watch me paint, it loses the magic," he says.

After sealing off light and covering all furniture, Stewart spends four to five hours scrupulously painting either specific constellations amid a star-filled sky or randomly arranged stars. He can even recreate an accurate night sky from any date customers might request. The fun begins when he finishes, charges the 10,000 or so tiny, invisible ceiling dots with sunlight or fluorescent or black light bulbs, and wows the homeowner for the first time.

Variation in stars’ sizes, brightness and positioning creates a 3-D illusion that makes the ceiling appear jet black, an abyss that draws the eye beyond the ceiling’s physical limits. The effect, which Stewart likens to the view from a mountaintop and not the Hubble Space Telescope, lasts up to 10 hours before it needs recharging. The mural itself can last for decades.

For about $650 to $1,150 for a 12-by-12-foot room, clients can view a piece of the universe from the comfort of their own bedrooms, living rooms, home theaters, nurseries or bathrooms. Shooting stars and the Milky Way galaxy cost an additional $10 to $15, and Stewart will travel practically anywhere for a fee, which he often waives for multiple-room gigs and back-to-back jobs.

Although he says he has "zero artistic talent," Stewart’s clients couldn’t disagree more. "Going into my bedroom is like going into another world," says Dyna Murphy of Bakersfield, Calif., who frequently gets unexpected but welcome visitors eager to witness the talk of the town. "I chose the sky from the night I met my boyfriend and also added elements from my dad’s birth date. It’s breathtaking."

Among Stewart’s favorite projects are rooms with domed ceilings and slanted walls — they accentuate the stars’ dimensions — and an elaborate glow-in-the-dark wall mural of the New York skyline with a starry backdrop. "I grew up stargazing while camping in the Redwoods, where there’s no light pollution, and I think I’m very close to matching that," Stewart says. "You really almost have to see it to believe it."

Photo cutline:
Stewart painted the ceiling above an indoor pool at the Red Rock Mansion, an upscale retreat in Las Vegas, and plans to return to bring the stars all the way to the pool’s edge. "It will create the feeling of swimming in space," he says.

For more information, visit nightskymurals.com or call 877-882-2456.
The picture has been digitally enhanced by Night Sky Murals to show both the mural and the pool at the same time. The stars are visible only when the room is darkened. Photography by Jim Dunn, Image Digitally Enhanced by Think Tank Creative Consortium

BEST OF UTAH 2005

BEST ASTRONOMICAL CEILINGS
Night Sky Murals
Stupid, boring ceiling. It offers no pleasure or delight whatsoever. But what if you knew of a way to transform that stupid, boring ceiling into an astronomically-accurate work of art? Jeff Stewart launched this service that allows you to pick the sky map of your choice and have it transferred in photo-luminescent paint onto the ceiling of your choice. No more of those lame plastic or sticker constellations for your children's rooms--or for your own. If the idea of falling asleep as though you were in the great outdoors tickles your fancy, then call or write to Jeff at…
801-599-9836, www.NightSkyMurals.com

DESERET NEWS

Tuesday, September 23, 2003

Got stars in your eyes? Artist has ceiling for you
Night sky comes inside, thanks to Utah company

By Brice Wallace
Deseret Morning News

"What is it you want, Mary? What do you want? You, you want the moon? Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down. Hey, that's a pretty good idea. I'll give you the moon, Mary."

Night Sky Murals owner Jeff Stewart wields his paintbrush. His murals will glow eight to 13 hours a night.

Michael Brandy, Deseret Morning News
"I'll take it. Then what?"

Those famous words from "It's a Wonderful Life" helped make Jimmy Stewart a star, but it's Jeff Stewart who can help the George Baileys deal with the insatiable Marys of the world.

Using a special blend of paint, Jeff Stewart can make it so that the first star you see tonight is, oh, about eight feet away.

The night sky murals Stewart paints on ceilings are designed to outdistance their plastic counterparts by lasting eight to 13 hours a night while costing significantly less than fiber-optic versions — a not-so-out-of-this-world average price of $7 per square foot.

It's left more than one customer starry-eyed.

"We recreate that night sky that you see way out in the country or way out on a mountain, and we do it right on your ceiling," said Stewart, the artist who operates Night Sky Murals out of Salt Lake City. "You lay down on your bed and turn the lights off, and there it is."

The special proprietary mixture is nontoxic, permanent and washable and is undetectable during the daytime if applied to white, off-white or pastel ceilings or walls. The material soaks up the sun or fluorescent or black light and then glows when the room darkens. A 12-foot-square ceiling can be treated in three to five hours. Examples are available at www.nightskymurals.com.

And for folks looking for something astronomically accurate, Stewart's celestial seasonings can depict the stars' positions during particular dates, such as birth dates or anniversaries. Shooting stars or the Milky Way can be added as accents.

"The plastic stars you get at the store are really cartoonish. The best way to describe ours is what it looks like if you were to go outside at night during a power outage, when there are no lights," Stewart said. "At a home show, we had six astronomers come in, and I was sweating bullets. These guys know their stuff, but they thought it was incredible. It's the kind of thing you have to see to understand and appreciate."

Faye Carnahan understands. The Sandy woman had Stewart paint the ceiling of her home's basement movie theater, Milky Way and all.

"It reminds us of the old Egyptian Theater in Ogden," Carnahan said. "When we were little kids, we’d go there and we'd look up and see the stars in the ceiling. We tried to recreate that on our ceiling. It has all the constellations and the North Star."

The scene depicts June 5, 1993, combining her husband Steve's birthday and the year their daughter was born.

"Everybody who comes in and sees it wants it in their house," she said. "We've got friends who just go in there who don't even want to watch the movie. They just sit in the theater seats and look up at the ceiling.

"It looks like you're outside in the middle of Wyoming with no city lights, just the night sky. We'll turn on black lights so that you can see the night sky while you watch the movie, but it will last all night long. It's not cheesy at all. My husband thought it would be. He thought he (Stewart) would just be painting some little dots. But it's very nice."

One of Stewart's neighbors, Catherine Bee, believes the murals have universal appeal. A bit more than a year ago, Stewart showed her and her two boys a painted room at his home. The stars were aligned just right.

"He kept talking us about it, and I kept putting him off, but he said that we just wouldn't appreciate it until we saw it. He finally got me to come over. I thought, 'Oh, my heck!' The kids said, 'We want this!' and I said, 'No kidding, we do!' "

She wanted the young boys to use the mural as an educational tool to learn about the heavens, matching what they had in their room with the outdoors.

"We loved it. They loved it. The first morning after it was done, the oldest kids came up and said, 'Mom, thanks for the stars.' I thought that was cute, coming from boys, who usually don't appreciate anything," she said.

Not long afterward, Stewart returned to do the parents' bedroom to create yet another star chamber. "It's so relaxing, just the coolest thing in the world," she said.

That room features a mountainscape, complete with a rising moon.

Unable to stop, the Bees had Stewart back once more, completing a ceiling for two daughters, ages 1 and 2, making their home a popular destination for sleepovers, with youngsters putting their bodies under the faux planetary bodies.

"They don't appreciate it fully yet, but the 2-year-old knows where the stars are and says, 'Goodnight, stars.' It's been a lot of fun. We've made it into kind of a ritual where we play a game and turn on the stars. She blows on the light switch to turn it off."

The light switch went on over Stewart's head about 20 years ago when he saw a similar glowing-paint treatment in Seattle. "I thought it was the neatest thing I'd ever seen in my life," he said. "It took me back to one of the first times I was out in the mountains when I was young and I saw the stars the way they should be seen, with no city lights and no moon."

He experimented with different techniques — "I told myself, I'm going to figure this out" — and moonlighted for a few years off and on. And he thanks his lucky stars he's found a faux painter friend who, together with Stewart, concocted the final blend of paint, which is just perfect in helping to create the magic.

For younger children looking for crazy cosmos, he's even got stencils in order to put spaceships or cartoon characters amid the stars. But they will typically have shorter glow life, allowing the stars to remain after they fade. He used to add nebulas and moons, but the nebulas detract from the realistic look, and anything more than a crescent moon is too bright, becoming the star of the show.

"There's nothing to plug in or trip over," he said of his murals. "And if you have a ceiling fan, we paint around it. We'll put some stars on the base. When the lights are off and the ceiling fan is on, it gives you a breeze just like when you're outside."

Bee can relate. Her bedroom leaves her sky-high.

"We get that TV turned off at night and just sit and relax and talk. It's like bringing the night sky inside," she said.

"The pictures on the Web site actually don’t do it justice. There's nothing like laying down, turning off the lights and watching the stars. In our room we have the ceiling fan, so we have the breeze. It's all there, except that there are no bugs crawling on you."

Stewart’s murals have become quite popular lately, and he says that over the past few years he has started getting calls from around the country to have him fly out and paint the murals himself. "I love traveling around the country," Stewart told me. "It’s a great way to see the country and I love to meet new people. And, if it’s somewhere within a day or two drive, I like to load up the family and let them come with me to see the country too."

Ceilings are the most popular site, but he will paint down the walls from there, with mountain silhouettes or even entire ceiling-and-wall combinations that make a visitor feel like they're floating in space.

Bedrooms, theater rooms and spas are typical locations, but the sky's the limit. He'll spend some time next month working at a California bed and breakfast destined for stardom.

If you are ready to bring the outdoors, indoors in your own home or business, then give Stewart a call at (801) 599-9836, (877) 882-2456 or visit his website at www.NightSkyMurals.com
________________________________________
E-MAIL: bwallace@desnews.com
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© 2003 Deseret News Publishing Company

KUTV 2NEWS

Night Sky Murals Bring Stars Indoors
Jan 21, 2003 3:38 pm US/Mountain

Imagine sleeping under the stars every night even in January. In this Fresh Idea, Lea Ann Lobb shows us how a local man is putting the stars in reach.

"So it will go from about here to down over here. It will look like there's a skyline in here."

Cathrine Bee wanted a different and creative way to decorate her home. When she found out her neighbor Jeff Stewart could paint the night sky on her ceilings, she had to try it.

You can't even see them during the day because the murals are invisible in the light, but when the lights go out...

The ceiling seems to disappear before your eyes and you're left with what looks like a star-filled night sky.

"During the day you don't see the night sky and so it's a great way to decorate and to be able to enjoy something without having to totally change your decor," Bee said.

For Catherine's kids the starry ceiling acts as the ultimate "night light".

"They glow all night and help me sleep pretty good," Ethan Bee said.

"Everybody wants the Big Dipper. They also want the Little Dipper, Cassiopeia, Andromeda, and Orion. But we can do any constellations that people want. Just tell us any date in time and we will paint the same night sky that was out on that date," said Jeff Stewart of Night Sky Murals.

The constellations are now in four rooms of Catherine's home including her bedroom.

"We have a ceiling fan in our room and we turn that on and we also turn on some music, like cricket sounds or music and it’s just like being outside camping," she said.

So if you're looking for a new way to decorate, or just a way to relax, the sky's the limit

Capturing the full effect of the stars is tough to get on videotape. Lea Ann says it is much more dramatic to see it with your own eyes. As for the cost, Stewart says that charges start at around $6.00 per square foot with a few lesser priced options available too.

For more information on Night Sky Murals contact Jeff Stewart at (801) 599-9836 or go to www.NightSkyMurals.com

ROBB REPORT

Starry, Starry Night
Karen J. Bannan
01/01/2006

As a child, Michael De Rosa dreamed of becoming an astronaut. He never achieved that dream, but he can stargaze every night, and morning, too, because he recently installed Numinus’ 4-foot-wide StarDome in his Whidbey Island, Wash., home.
StarDomes are realistic-looking, artificially simulated slices of the night sky. There are two options, domes and ceiling tiles, but only domes can simulate dawn and dusk and be customized with specific stars or galaxies. Either option allows the manufacturer to use fiber-optic wires, dimmers, paint and regular incandescent lighting to turn a regular white ceiling into a galactic masterpiece.

"We use plastic fiber-optic wires that look like fishing wire to create twinkling effects," says Chris Isaacson, Numinus’ general manager. "We can simulate the fading colors of the sun—as the cove lights around the dome fade, you see a sunset."
De Rosa installed his StarDome in a large multilevel room he calls a gallery. The room, which sits in the middle of his 5,600-square-foot home, is surrounded by a balcony and fluted columns; he says he decided to install a dome to make the room even more impressive. "It’s mostly a show-off thing—I’ll admit it," he says. "I got the 18-constellation dome with shooting stars and moon. It’s just really beautiful and relaxing and appealing."

Painted murals by Night Sky Murals of Salt Lake City are very different from fiber-optic domes and tiles. Murals use glowing pigments and illuminating materials to create stars, and do not require electricity. They also work best when in total darkness. "I can paint an accurate night sky," says Jeff Stewart, founder of Night Sky Murals. "You tell me the date and where you live, and I can paint the sky exactly as it looked that night."

Stewart says while both options—domes and murals—are beautiful, people should make their decisions based on room usage. "Both are great applications, but if there is going to be a lot of light in the room, the domes outshine what I do. My work is really for someone who wants their night sky to last 10 to 12 hours and look really natural."

A digitally enhanced image of a room with a painted ceiling by Night Sky Murals. The stars are visible only when the room is darkened. Photo---graphy by Jim Dunn, Image Digitally Enhanced by Think Tank Creative Consortium