Though consumer house paints and coatings 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. 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. 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. White, black, blue, red, yellow, and green were their hues of choice. 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, new practices and technologies were shaking up the world of house paint even more.
In this time of constantly documented celebrity misconduct, some may not even remember what modesty was. In the 17th century, the Pilgrims, who populated the American colonies, believed that modesty was the avoidance of all displays of wealth, joy, 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. These Colonial paint “cooks” often used food items like egg whites, milk, rice, and coffee.
From the 17th century until the 19th, oil and water were the primary bases for paint production. 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 this period would fulfill these requests. Even in 1638, a historic home named “Ham House” 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. Unfortunately, before the 18th century, hand-grinding could expose painters to white-lead powder, which could result in 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” that it used to grind its pigment, thus allowing them to sell paint at unbeatable prices. 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 exception; 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.
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 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 being too wet or too dry.
Sherwin Williams, a giant behemoth in the paint world today, was founded in 1866. 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.
Another current industry heavyweight, Benjamin Moore, began operations in 1883. Twenty-four years later, it added a research department powered by a single, lonely chemist. Since then, Benjamin Moore Paint has contributed a great deal to paint technology, but the company’s color-matching system, unveiled in 1982 and entirely computer-based, is still considered by many to be its most noteworthy achievement in the 21st century, paint remains a formidable moneymaker; roughly $20.9 billion of the stuff was sold in 2006 alone.
Though house paint is most frequently applied to the surfaces of a home, many artists have used it to bring their canvases to life. 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. World War II led to a dearth of linseed oil, so chemists combined alcohols and acids to make alkyds, artificial resins that could 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.
seattle paint dealer has origins dating to the industrial revolution.
To be specific, milk paint doesn’t contain volatile organic compounds, commonly known as VOCs. Latex paint, however, does contain VOCs, making them potentially dangerous to pets and humans. 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. Thankfully, most paint companies have low or zero VOC paint available. The term “zero-VOC,” by EPA standards, means that each liter of paint contains fewer than 5 grams of volatile compounds. Other non-VOC alternates are 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.
