Though house paint decorates our homes and protects their surfaces from rot, drying, and the elements, we often take it for granted. Yet this seemingly simple product has a long, fascinating history – much too long and fascinating to summarize in just one essay. A brief history, however, is better than no history at all. In that spirit, we present a few snapshots of house paint’s evolution in order to heighten your appreciation of it, and to provide some perspective on humans’ need to secure and beautify their dwelling places.
Forty millennia ago, cave inhabitants combined various substances with animal fat to make paint, which they used to add pictures and colors to the walls of their crude homes. Red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal were all employed as color elements. Starting around 3150 B.C., ancient Egyptian painters mixed a base of oil or fat with color elements like ground glass or semiprecious stones, lead, earth, or animal blood. These ancient peoples preferred black, white, red, blue, green, and yellow. At the turn of the 14th century, house painters in England created guilds, which established standards for the profession and kept trade secrets under lock and key. By the 17th century, new practices and technologies were shaking up the world of house paint even more.
In this era of reality TV and manufactured celebrities, it can be hard to remember the definition of modesty. For the Pilgrims, who populated the American colonies in the 17th century, modesty meant avoiding all displays of joy, wealth, or vanity. Even painting your home was deemed very immodest and highly sacrilegious. In 1630, a Charlestown preacher ran afoul of the growing society’s mores by decorating his home’s interior with paint; he was brought up on criminal charges of sacrilege.
Even colonial Puritanism, however, failed to silence the demand for house paint. Anonymous authors wrote “cookbooks” that offered recipes for various kinds and colors of paint. One oft-used process, called the “Dutch method,” mixed ground oyster shells and lime which made a white wash; iron or copper oxide for red or green color, respectively could then be added to the mix. Colonial paint “cooks” also used items from the pantry, including milk, egg whites, coffee, and rice, to turn out their illegal product.
Water and oil were the main bases for paint creation from the 17th century to the 19th. Each naturally held some colors more than others, and there were differences in the durability and coat, depending on which mixture was used. Water-based paints were used for ceilings and plaster walls, and oils were used for joinery. Often times, homeowners would request walls that looked like marble, wood, or bronze and ceilings that looked like a blue sky with fat white clouds. Painters of this period would fulfill these requests. Even in 1638, a historic home named “Ham House” in Surrey, England, was renovated. Renovating the home was a multiple-step process, involving the usage of primer, a couple of undercoats, and a finishing coat of paint to show paneling and cornices in the home. During this time period in paint’s evolutionary history, oil and pigment were hand-mixed to make a stiff paste, which is still done to this day. If a pigment is well-ground, it should disperse almost entirely in oil. Before the 18th century, hand-grinding often exposed painters to an excess of white-lead powder, which could bring about lead poisoning. Despite its toxicity, lead paint was popular at the time due to its durability, which remains difficult to equal. Fortunately, painters eventually added air extraction systems to their workshops, thus reducing the health risks of grinding lead-based pigment. The United States finally banned the usage of lead in house paint in 1978.
During the 1700s, paint production underwent a transformation. In 1700 in Boston, MA, the first American paint mill opened its doors. The Englishman Marshall Smith in 1718, created a “Machine or Engine for the Grinding of Colours,” which created a competition between countries to grind pigment more effectively. In 1741, the English company Emerton and Manby publicized the “Horse-Mills” it used to grind pigment, which allowed it to sell paint at prices its rivals couldn’t match. Elizabeth Emerton, one of the owners, said, “One Pound of Colour ground in a Horse-Mill will paint twelve Yards of Work, whereas Colour ground any other Way, will not do half that Quantity .”
The turn of the 19th century brought about the reign of steam power. In fact, most paint mills during this time period ran on steam. Another, more significant improvement also occurred around this time: Nontoxic zinc oxide became a viable base for white pigment, thanks to European ingenuity it came to the US in 1855.
By the end of the 1800s, roller mills had started to grind pigment as well as grain, and the guild system that had organized English house painters for centuries became a network of trade unions. Mass production of paint was no longer a pipe dream, and linseed oil, a cheap binding agent that also helped protect wood, made it even easier.
It was in the 19th century that decorating a home with paint became the norm rather than an outlier. After all, paint made surfaces washable and, by sealing in wood’s natural oils, kept walls from becoming either too moist or too dry.
In 1866, a future titan of the paint business, Sherwin-Williams Paint, was born. The company was the first maker of ready-to-use paint; its original product, raw umber in oil, debuted in 1873. Shortly after, cofounder Henry Sherwin invented a resealable tin can.
Benjamin Moore, one of Sherwin Williams top competitors, was born in 1883. Twenty-four years later, it added a research department powered by a single, lonely chemist. Ever since, Benjamin Moore has contributed amazing discoveries in paint technology, but its color-matching system, unveiled in 1982 and wholly computer-based, is unmatched paint is still lucrative today; around $20.9 billion in paint was sold in 2006.
House paint is most often applied to the surface of a residence, but artists have also used it on their canvases. American painter John Frost, who began his career as an artist in 1919, used house paint to chronicle the history of his hometown, the tiny village of Marblehead, Mass. Picasso and many of his contemporaries used it as well. Even some modern artists, like Pollack admirer Nik Ehm, experiment with house paint as a medium.
Mid-20th century is when necessity became the mother of invention. The major conflict known as the Second world war contributed to the supply of linseed oil’s demise, so chemists used a combination of alcohols and acids to create alkyds, artificial resins that are a substitute for natural oil.
Today, most house painting paints is acrylic, or water-based, although milk paint, popular in the 19th century for its subtle hues, has become the darling of the sustainability movement thanks to its minimal environmental impact.
north seattle remodel contractor has origins dating to the industrial revolution.
Specifically, milk paint doesn’t have any volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Conventional latex paint, on the other hand, does contain them, which makes it potentially hazardous to humans and pets. If you’re exposed to VOCs for an extended period of time, it could lead to nerve or organ damage, and it may even cause cancer. Luckily, many paint companies produce low- or even zero-VOC paints. The term “zero-VOC,” by EPA standards, means that each liter of paint contains fewer than 5 grams of volatile compounds. Other non-VOC options include clay- and water-based paints. If you suffer from allergies, you must used low-VOC paint. Low VOC paints have great advantages no matter what the circumstances, because their relative lack of odor makes rooms livable faster.
To the layman paint may seem simple and straight forward, however, it has evolved over the centuries to our financial, health, and aesthetic needs. While paint may seem basic, it’s almost miraculous that it can elevate our mood so drastically. Whenever you next pop open a paint can, think about the journey it made to add more beauty and quality to your life.
Stay awhile and monkey around!