Home Alternative Green Energy

In the quest for green living, interior paint is a rather big issue. We don't paint often, but when we do, things can get messy. Things already improved by masssively replacing oil based paints by acrylics. But still, acrylic paints are also highly chemical substances. And there's more - acrylic house paints are by far less durable then oil based paints. In five years, they start to peel and need to be painted over. On top of that, they keep exhuming funny gases, even long after they dried.
Of course the durability can be helped by more chemistry. But there are different, more natural options.

What's toxic about paints?
First, there's the solvent issue. Oil based paints need to be thinned with turpentine - bad for the skin and the environment. Acrylics thin with water. But there's a downside to that: one may get to believe that acrylics are harmless and can be tossed into the sink. Which is not a good idea.
Shellac is even more difficult in terms of solvents - pure shellac only dissolves in pure alcohol or thinner. When you work with it, there's a high omission of VOC (volatile organic components)
But: shellac is a purely natural component, and considered safe for kids furniture and toys - once it's dry.

Other toxic aspects of paints are their binder, and their pigment. First the binder. I think, in the list of traditional binders, acrylic binder is the most toxic of them all... The pure ingredient of oil-based paint is linseed oil - you can put that on your salad, if you like the taste of it. Eventual additives may be less harmless, but it's very well possible to produce a 'green' oil paint. Latex is a rubber, also a natural ingredient. About eggs and milk, there's no need of saying more.

And last, the pigments. Some pigments are toxic, others are harmless. Some ar e natural, others highly chemical. It's a matter of choice, made by the paint manufacturer. A choice you can make yourself, when you make your own paint.

Available green options

Really, there are many green options available for exterior and interior house painting, especially when you work with fresh materials like untreated wood and plaster, or new drywall. Although, shellac sticks to virtually anything (and can be painted over with latex or oil-based paint). Green paints often need a little extra drying time, or care while you handle them. Egg- and milk paint have to be really fresh, when liquid they start to rot within days (which makes them unsuitable for retail), but of course, that's only a problem for big manufacturers. And, sometimes you need to do an extra layer or so.

For new walls, egg-tempera paint or milk paint is a good option. Egg-tempera is made of eggs and pigments in water, carefully put together in the right proportion of volumes. Egg paint dries fast, is tender for the first week, but gets really tough in time. The Egyptian tombs were painted with egg-tempera paint (about 3000 years ago).
For milk paint, it's about the same. It's the caseine that makes milk a good binder. Caseine is one of the strongest glues around. Milk or fresh cheese was used in Italian dry fresco, which also have been preserved for ages (in most cases). Milk paint was used in traditional American farm houses. It can be put on untreated wood as well, and it's available in a ready-to-mix powder form, to which you only have to add water.
Both egg-tempera and milk paints are matte. You can make them shiny by giving them an extra layer of another binder, like bees wax (that was turned into a soap), a shellac, or eventually an acrylic. But usually, people prefer matte colors for walls.

For the protection of wood, boiled linseed oil or polymerized tung oil are good options. Tung oil is said to be less yellowing. Especially polymerized tung oil is a great material. It's made of nuts, so people with an allergy to nuts have to be careful with it. Tung- and linseed oil have different drying processes, and shouldn't be mixed or painted over each other.

For the rest, getting good protection for your wood and plaster walls is mostly a matter of layering the materials right. When you polish or paint a linseed-oiled wood every year with a fresh, thin layer, it will be kept good for hundreds of years.
If you want to make a new start on old oil-based layers, use shellac, and after that an eco-friendly oil-based paint.

Top of Page