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. Hematite, manganese oxide, red and yellow ochre, and charcoal were used as “paint”. 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. 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.
This colonial Puritanism could not stop the demand for house paint, though. 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.
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. Water-based paints were used for ceilings and plaster walls, and oils were used for joinery. 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. 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. 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. Not until 1978 did the U.S. finally ban the sale of lead house paint.
During the 1700s, paint production underwent a transformation. 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 .”
As any steampunk aficionado will tell you, the turn of the 19th century meant the rise 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.
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 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. 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.
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. Shortly after, cofounder Henry Sherwin invented a resealable tin can.
Another current industry heavyweight, Benjamin Moore, began operations in 1883. Twenty-four years passed, and the company created a research department headed up by one 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 some of his peers used house paint in their work. Even contemporary artists, like Nik Ehm, use house paint on occasion.
Mid-20th century is when necessity became the mother of invention. 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.
Specifically, milk paint doesn’t have any volatile organic compounds, or VOCs. Latex paint, however, does contain VOCs, making them potentially dangerous to pets and humans. Extended exposure to VOCs can lead to organ or nerve damage, and some may be carcinogenic. Luckily, many paint companies produce low- or even zero-VOC paints. By EPA standards, the term, “zero-VOC,” means that each liter of paint has less than 5 grams of VOCs. Other non-VOC options include 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. Whenever you next pop open a paint can, think about the journey it made to add more beauty and quality to your life.