A darkroom is a given space, usually a separate area in a building or a vehicle, for photographers to use light-sensitive materials to develop photographs.
Darkrooms were widely used in the late 19th and early to late 20th centuries (until about 1980) before the universal popularity of color photography because amateur photographers could get much better results at home for a reasonable price than with factory-developed prints.
This proved to be much harder with color photographs and the development of Polaroid technology causing a falling off in popularity.
They are often still used on school campuses and photo labs.
The heart of every darkroom is the enlarger, an optical apparatus that projected an image of the negative on a base. Here a sheet of photographic paper is put and exposed, where the photo could be modified by giving parts of the image more light and other parts less by holding objects in the bundle of light, moving them constantly to prevent visible edges in the result.
The paper is then developed, fixed, and dried.
The darkroom does not have to be completely dark for most black and white materials, red light or low-intensity orange or yellow light made it possible to see when making prints. Only for putting film into developing tanks is complete darkness a requirement.
