Grading Suite Build Guide

Grading Suite Build Guide by Kaur Hendrikson. For those who dare to try. First edition, September 2026. The overview shows all 22 Dark edition pages in order. Concealed body paragraphs and longer figure captions are replaced with placeholder text; the cover, contents, headings, short introductions, selected diagrams and selected text are sharp. The "The full room" diagram and all room layouts after the first plan and side-view pair are blurred in this preview.

Contents introduction, page 3: Model numbers rot, rules do not. This guide gives you the rule for each part of the room, why it is the rule, and how to check it. Specific products are named only as examples.

Section headings and short introductions (page numbers refer to the guide):

• "Buying Order" (4): Buying order and reading order aren't necessarily the same. Hence this being a separate section. Selected readable text: 0. The computer you already own.
• "Displays" (5): A display that can be calibrated and does the job.
• "I/O Devices" (7): One defined path out of Resolve to your reference display.
• "Audio" (9): Good enough to watch a film through, and no further.
• "Room Layout" (10): One reference display, and everyone in the room looking at it from within 30 degrees of straight on.
• "The Surround" (14): The wall behind your display should sit at 2-5 cd/m² (nits).
• "Paint" (16): Get neutral, matte, gray paint matched at a paint counter.
• "Bias Lighting" (17): Buy one with a dimmer.
• "Calibration" (18): Calibration is its own discipline, and hiring someone for the first one is usually the right call.
• "Computer" (19): You don't need the best of the best.
• "Storage" (19): Fast enough to play your footage, big enough to hold it, and backed up.
• "Panel & Control Surface" (20): Optional, genuinely. Buy when the mouse starts slowing you down.
• "Furniture & Client Comfort" (21): This is the biggest difference between grading suites.
• "Where the numbers come from" (22): Every figure in this guide has a document behind it. Thanks: Three people helped make this guide better.

Subheadings: You do not need an HDR display; Five things to check, and the first one decides the rest; None of this stops you starting; Four things to read up on; Three decisions; The rules; The layouts, and what each one costs; When you don't share a room with the client; The length of the strip, and where to put it; The two instruments, and why you end up needing both; What a panel does that nothing else can; What a Stream Deck does that a panel cannot; Buying.

Diagrams and their labels:

• Page 6: screen diagonal in inches = seat distance in centimeters / 3.8.
• Page 8, THE MINIMUM ROOM: Computer / Resolve connects to I/O Device / DeckLink or UltraStudio by PCIe, Thunderbolt or USB4, then to Reference Display / What you judge by SDI or HDMI. A separate HDMI / DisplayPort branch feeds GUI Monitor / Resolve's interface. One leaves on a signal standard. The other through the operating system.
• Page 9: "The full room" diagram is blurred in this preview.
• Pages 11–14: the first plan and side-view pair, labeled A1 CLIENT IN FRONT and A1 FROM THE SIDE, is clear. The remaining layout diagrams are blurred in this preview.
• Page 15: identical gray squares On black and On white; a second pair On green and On magenta. Both squares are the same gray, and both surrounds are the same brightness.
• Page 16: surround luminance = wall reflectance x light falling on the wall / π. The diagram labels Wall, Display, Bias light, Your eye and Scattered every way at once. 1 LIGHT ON THE WALL: The dimmer sets this. 2 WHAT COMES BACK: The paint sets this. 3 WHAT YOU SEE: 5 cd/m², measured.