If the network is standalone, not connected to any other network, and never will be connected to any other network, then use whatever you want. Public or Private, it doesn't matter.
However, that is becoming less and less common all the time as the push is to get everything connected together. Having to go back and change IP addresses for everything on your network because someone decided to use public addresses is a major PITA. Keep in mind too, that if you are using public IP addresses and you end up connecting to your corporate network where a router exists, there is a chance data will get sent to the router and forwarded to that actual IP address on the internet.
You can always stick with private, but use the less common ranges. I would suggest first that you use a range that is not being used by the corporate network. I see a lot of 10.x.x.x for corporate networks, so I would use 192.168 or 172.16 for my controls network. There are so many subnets available under those ranges that you shouldn't run into a conflict with commercial devices and their default settings.
I would absolutely not use 1.x.x.x because I think it will save me thousands of keystrokes. That is not a good reason for using a public address.
OG