The Benefits of Eco-Friendly Paint
Whether you’re looking to reimagine and modernize your home with the latest trends or you are moving into a new home, repainting the interior and exterior of your house is one of the best ways to highlight your decor, add property value and showcase your distinctive tastes. It’s often tempting to go with popular products and recognizable paint brands. While these traditional paints will effectively transform your space, they can also negatively affect the environment and your family’s health. This is why many are considering their environmental impact and carbon footprints and choosing to restructure their lifestyles to be more eco-friendly – from installing LED lightbulbs and eco-friendly paint and driving hybrid cars to upgrade to more energy-efficient appliances.
But did you know that eco-friendly products extend to common home remodeling products like paint as well? Eco-friendly paints are becoming more widely available and are designed to be more durable and beautiful than ever – revolutionizing the way homeowners think about refreshing the look and feel of their homes.
What Is Eco-Friendly Paint?
When you crack open a fresh can of paint, nothing is more distinctive than the strong odor of freshly mixed paint and the swirl of colors and sheen. While this familiar sight and smell mark the beginning of an exciting new home improvement project, these characteristics are also associated with paint containing unhealthy levels of volatile organic chemicals (VOCs). VOCs are a variety of different chemicals paints and varnishes emit. They can lead to adverse health risks like poor indoor air quality, respiratory illness, and headaches.
Eco-friendly paints are innovative products that are specially designed to have few if not zero levels of VOCs. While traditional paint products are often oil-based with a mixture of adhesives, hardeners, pigments, and drying accelerators, eco-friendly paints are non-toxic and often water-based.
Benefits of Using Environmentally Friendly Paints
With manufacturing techniques evolving, eco-friendly paint products are more durable and green than ever. These paints come in a wide selection of hues to complement any style while offering long-term performance, improving the overall health of your household, and protecting the environment.
Eco-friendly paint also offers a variety of additional benefits like:
- Low VOC content: VOCs are present in most traditional paint. These chemicals not only leave behind an unpleasant odor and wafting pollutants that affect your home’s indoor air quality, but they are also non-biodegradable and non-recyclable. Eco-friendly paints have little to no VOCs, producing much less waste and damage.
- Improved formulation from natural materials: Eco-friendly paints are manufactured only from natural ingredients like lemon peel extract, seed oil, and beeswax. During manufacturing, these paints do not produce harmful emissions, producing fewer negative side effects on the environment.
- Minimal environmental impact: By utilizing water or alternative environmentally friendly materials as a base, eco-friendly paints greatly help reduce your carbon footprint and are biodegradable.
- Healthier alternative: The VOCs found in chemical paints are active up to five years after the initial application. Individuals continuously exposed to VOCs are at a higher risk of developing respiratory illness and lung cancer. Eco-friendly paints – because they’re manufactured from natural and environmentally friendly ingredients – are completely safe for everyone living in your home, including pregnant women, young children, elderly individuals, or those who suffer from asthma.