A screen will give you as near as possible a perfectly uniform flatness and colour and the border will help with perceived contrast. You can make a wall as near good as a screen but you need a perfectly smooth wall to begin with painted using a spray gun. If you just project onto a typical emulsion wall you can usually see some roller strokes and weird things happening with the light scatter.
Really thing other big this that will effect the projected image is ambient light - so can you black out the windows with black out blinds? And even if so are all the rest of the walls in the room white? Unfortunately even with the windows blacked out the light projecting onto the projector then reflects onto the white walls and bounces back onto the screen which can wash out the image a lot. Take a look at some of the home cinema rooms on avforums or even dans room on this thread
https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/living-room-with-in-wall-7-1-4-and-pj.18787450/ You dont have to paint every wall black but just paining some of the walls a darker colour can make a huge difference to the image you'll get.
The other thing that can help out massively is an ALR 'Ambient light rejecting' screen like a 'React.' These reject light that doesnt come at them from straight on - they're expensive but they can work really well in lighter home environments ( you still need draw the curtains / blinds)
Well the good news is fixed screens are typically cheaper and good quality - cheap pull downs can have problems with curling an uniformity.
For a decent 'normal' fixed screen you can look at brands like Granview and Sapphire. For a fixed frame light rejecting screen React are the most well known and they start at £800 i think optoma themselves also make one now.
Bulb life in normal bulb based projectors varies I think the last gen Sony projectors where about 4000 hours JVC and Epsons where about 6000 hours - the bulbs are typically expensive for the genuine replacements £150 - £250 region and unfortunately a lot of the manufacturers only provide a 1 year warrantee on the bulbs. LED is defiantly better on life but few manufacturers are using it - Laser is a great solution with a very long life, great brightness and no degradation during the life of the bulb... but its expensive - the Epson Laser 4kshift projectors are £5,500
With a bright projector you can sort of get away with watching news, football, a cartoon or anything that is very brightly lit but even then it will be a bit washed out - you can absolutely forget about trying to watch a film or any time of drama with cinematic aspirations in that environment.
That all said I'd rather watch a movie on a decently setup 1080p projector than a 4k television any day of the week - but its not a simple as ' spend a couple of grand and you can have a projected image in a white living room that competes with a native 4k WGC HDR tv.'
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