CENTRAL FALLS - Stand near the circulation desk of the Central Falls Free Public Library and listen.

Besides the quiet rustle of patrons turning pages and the occasional clack of the clerk's computer keys, you'll hear a few gentle creaks, muffled footsteps and soft conversation. From above.

Beyond the latticework of pipe scaffolding and plywood platforms that covers the library's lobby, two painters are sheathing a 91-year-old plaster dome in vibrant greens and yellows, lavender and gold.

The dome has been plain white for as long as anyone can remember. Its plaster reliefs of painters' palettes, musical instruments and nautical tools blended with the blanched background. And the dome itself often went unseen.

“It's one of the architectural features of the building, but it doesn't grab your attention,” said Thomas J. Shannahan, the library director. “A lot of people, when I asked them, said it was the first time they had ever noticed the dome.”

Shannahan decided to change that. With grants from the Rhode Island Foundation and the Champlin Foundations, he hired Bill Reis, an accomplished painter from West Greenwich, to bring the dome into the world of color.

Reis, who had never painted a dome before, was initially hesitant about the assignment. But when he stood beneath the graceful dome he'd seen many times before, as a child growing up in Pawtucket, he suddenly had a vision for the library project.

“You can't imagine anything until you actually see something like this,” Reis said. “I was inspired by it immediately.”

Reis wanted to make the Central Falls dome look something like the Hermitage museum, in Leningrad, where gleaming gold-leaf reliefs stand out against brilliant vermilion walls. But he used his own range of colors, blending petal pinks, daffodil yellows, burnished gold and bold black against a vibrant spring green background.

“I wanted to make this still have an old look, but put a contemporary spin on it,” Reis said.

From the beginning, Reis had a clear mental picture of his final product. So when he started work, in mid-November, it was just a matter of resculpting a few damaged pieces of plaster and beginning to paint.

“We never changed one thing,” Reis said. “I did a couple of spots here and there in other colors, but this is what it wanted to be.”

Eight weeks into the project, Reis and his assistant, David Rogers, of Central Falls, have compiled a full artist's kit within the shelter of the dome. Toothpaste-style tubes of paint — ultramarine blue, Mars black, burnt sienna, raw umber — rest on a table. Plastic buckets hold brushes of all sizes, surrounded by bottles of modeling plaster and thick gold paint.

Two palettes, on which Reis mixes his raw materials into the colors he'll use, have dried nearby. Yellow paint has hardened like overcooked scrambled eggs. Nubs of orange look like melted Reese's Pieces. Dried mauve and purple could be failed experiments in cotton candy.

There are also the lesser-known tools of the artist's trade: Premium saltines and a block of cheese, near-empty cups of coffee, an open bottle of Lipton Green Tea with Honey, a dusty shop vacuum.

Reis and Rogers hunch near the floor, applying gold paint to an egg-and-dart pattern around the dome's lower tier. Above them, the rest of the dome has been coated in the tones of an audacious springtime.

Green stems blossom from the background into yellow lilies. A lute and some flutes shine in gold. There is a periwinkle-plaid bagpipe, a rainbow palette and pink flowers wreathed in blue-purple garlands. Each of the dome's relief panels is separated by geometric designs of gold on a stark black background, suggesting the style of a mosque.

Nearly all the white is covered over. In Reis's eye, the formerly bland dome finally looks as it should.

“When we [first] got up here and looked at it, it was like somebody forgot to finish the painting,” Reis said.

Within the next few weeks, Shannahan and Reis plan to unveil the painted dome for the public to see. They hope that when patrons enter the library or stop to check out books, they'll finally notice the artwork above their heads.

“They'll have plenty to look at now,” Shannahan said.

“They will,” Rogers added. “This is going to be like the sun.”