We take house paint for granted as a way to decorate our homes and protect surfaces against drying, rot, and the elements. But this unassuming product does in fact have a long and interesting history which cannot be easily summarized. However, a short history of paint can be just as fascinating as the long version. 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.
In the beginning, cavemen would mix certain substances with animal fat to create paint; they would then use the paint to draw pictures and add colors on their walls. Red and yellow ochre, hematite, manganese oxide, and charcoal were all employed as color elements. Ancient Egyptian painters mixed an oil or fat base with color elements like semiprecious stones, ground glass, earth, animal blood, or lead around 3150 B.C. These ancient peoples preferred black, white, red, blue, green, and yellow. In England, around the turn of the 14th century, house painters started guilds that established standards for their profession and kept trade secrets secret. By the 17th century, technology and new practices in house paint grew.
In this time of constantly documented celebrity misconduct, some may not even remember what modesty was. For the Pilgrims, who populated the American colonies in the 17th century, modesty meant avoiding all displays of joy, wealth, or vanity. Painting one’s house was considered highly immodest and even 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 popular process, known as the Dutch method, combined lime and ground oyster shells to make a white wash, to which iron or copper oxide – for red or green color, respectively – could be added. 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 held certain colors better than others, and there were differences in cost and durability between them, too. Ceilings and plaster walls generally called for water paints, while joinery demanded oils. Some homeowners wanted walls that looked like wood, marble, or bronze and ceilings that resembled a blue sky with puffy white clouds. Painters of the time routinely fulfilled such requests, which seem fairly eccentric by today’s standards. In 1638, a historic home known as Ham House, located in Surrey, England, was renovated.The multi-step process involved the application of primer, an undercoat or two, and a finishing coat of paint to elaborate paneling and cornices throughout the house. At this point in paint’s evolution, pigment and oil were mixed by hand to make a stiff paste – a practice still employed today. 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. Painters did eventually add air extraction systems in their workshops to reduce the health risks occurring from grinding lead-based pigment. The United States finally banned the usage of lead in house paint in 1978.
Paint production transformed dramatically during the 1700s. In 1700 in Boston, MA, the first American paint mill opened its doors. In 1718, the Englishman Marshall Smith devised a “Machine or Engine for the Grinding of Colours,” which prompted a sort of arms race with regard to grinding pigment efficiently. 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. Paint mills were no paradox; at this point in time, most of them 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.
Roller mills had begun to grind pigment and grain by the end of the 1800s, and the guild system begun in England became a trade union network. Mass production of paint was once only a dream, but the production of linseed oil, a cheap binding agent that protected wood as well, made that dream come true.
Decorating a home with paint became extremely popular in the 19th century. Paint did, after all, make surfaces easily washable and sealed in wood’s natural oils; in doing so, it kept walls from chosen to be too wet or too dry.
In 1866, a future titan of the paint business, Sherwin-Williams Paint, was born. Sherwin Williams was the first manufacturer of ready-to-use paint, and its original product, raw umber in oil, came onto the market in 1873. Soon after that, cofounder Henry Sherwin developed 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. John Frost, an American painter who began his career in 1919, employed the use of house paint to paint the history of his hometown, a tiny village called Marblehead in Massachusetts. Picasso and many of his contemporaries used it as well. Even contemporary artists, like Nik Ehm, use house paint on occasion.
In the middle of the 20th century, necessity became the mother of invention for the increasingly innovative paint industry. 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.
Most house paint today is acrylic, or water-based, paint; however, milk paint, which reached the height of its popularity in the 19th century for its unassuming hues, is cropping up again thanks to the environmental movement.
Los Angeles Painting has origins dating to pre-history.
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. Extended exposure to VOCs can lead to organ or nerve damage, and some may be carcinogenic. Thankfully, most paint companies have low or zero VOC paint available. By EPA standards, the term, “zero-VOC,” means that each liter of paint has less than 5 grams of VOCs. Other non-VOC alternates are clay and water-based paints. If you have allergies and/or chemical sensitivity, Low VOC Paint are a must. Low VOC paints have great advantages no matter what the circumstances, because their relative lack of odor makes rooms livable faster.
While paint is seemingly simplistic, it has evolved over the centuries to our financial, health, and aesthetic needs. That something so basic can allow us to express ourselves so strikingly, and elevate our mood so effectively, is almost a miracle. The next time you open a can of paint, consider how far through a long period it’s traveled to add a little beauty to your life…
