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Wall Paint Guide
Perhaps the most popular Wall Covering in use today, painted walls are a great way to add some personality and a pop of color to a room. Unfortunately, paint can also be a way to add toxic airborne chemicals to your home, too, if you choose the wrong ones. On the flip side, green paint has really become very popular, and more and more available, over the past few years, so it's available in just about any color you can dream up. Read on to learn more about finding and using green paint.
Pros of Paint
Paint is cheap, widely available, and durable enough that you usually end up replacing it because you want a new color, and not because it requires replacement. It's easy to install, and, thanks to increasing availability of green paints, no longer requires a gas mask or enduring head-spinning fumes to use.
Cons of Paint
It can be pretty messy stuff, so using it requires some pretty serious preparation — clearing rooms of furniture, taping and draping everything you don't want painted — and it's pretty permanent, so you don't want to get half-way through painting a room and change your mind about the color, unless you like doing everything twice.
How Green is Paint
Over the past decade, green paint has gone from fringe to mainstream, with many major manufacturers and retailers carrying a variety of brands and colors of green paint. When it comes to finding green paint, there's one thing you gotta know: That volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are the enemy. They come primarily from the pigment used to color the paint, and, as soon as the paint is exposed to air, they volatilize (sort of like evaporation) into the air, contributing to some serious indoor air pollution.
To avoid these baddies, look for low- or no-VOC paints. For a paint to be labeled "low-VOC," latex paints must containing fewer than 250 grams per liter and alkyd paints fewer than 380 g/liter; "no-VOC" paints are limited to five grams per liter. However, these tests are often done before pigments — a major source of VOCs — are added, so there's definitely a little wiggle room in there. Your best bet: Look for no-VOC paints, and, if you get home, start painting, and you can smell that gross "paint smell," take it back — you're smelling VOCs, and that's bad for you.
Where Do I Get It?
Almost any paint store in the country will have selections from big-time paint manufacturers that have green offerings — Sherwin Williams has their "Harmony" line, for example — and you can look for other high-quality green paints from Mythic Paint, Yolo Colourhouse, and Farrow & Ball, just to name a few.
Check out our buying guide for interior paint for some more tips. GreenSeal also has a good list of safe, healthy paints.
Where Do I Use It?
Paint goes well pretty much anywhere (even floors and ceilings), though it isn't quite as good for areas like showers, and kitchen and bathroom backsplashes which are often tiled. If you're painting in a room that gets lots of direct sunlight, know that it'll fade and bleach in the sun more quickly than areas that don't get as much sun.
What Does It Cost?
Green paint used to cost a big premium over conventional paints, but the gap has narrowed; in many cases, low- and no-VOC paints are quite competitive with their conventional counterparts; it really depends on the color and coverage you require. Most start around $8 per gallon, and can go north of $50 or $75 per gallon.
Can I Install it Myself?
Sure; all it really requires is a paint brush and steady hand, though anything more than a single wall can turn into a sizable project requiring what seems like miles of masking tape, drops cloths, ladders, rollers and extensions, and on and on. So, there's a reason that big jobs are often contracted out, but you can do it all, if you have the patience to get that top corner in your kitchen's cathedral ceilings.
More on Green Paint
VOCs: Volatile Organic Compounds, Indoor Air Quality and Respiratory Health
Ask TreeHugger: Household Green Paint Alternatives
Buy Green: Interior Paint
YOLO Colourhouse: Natural Paint
How Low-VOC Paint Works
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