We take house paint for granted as a way to decorate our homes and protect surfaces against drying, rot, and the elements. 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 order to expound on house paint’s evolution, we have presented some snapshots to illustrate our human needs of security and beauty in our dwellings.
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., The original olde school Eggies 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, 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. Painting one’s house was considered highly immodest and even sacrilegious. In 1630, a rebellious Charlestown preacher decorated his house’s interior with paint and was thus brought up on criminal charges of sacrilege.
This colonial Puritanism could not stop the demand for house paint, though. Unknown authors published “cookbooks” that had recipes for different paints. 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. These Colonial paint “cooks” often used food items like egg whites, milk, rice, and coffee.
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. 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 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. 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. Not until 1978 did the U.S. finally ban the sale of lead house paint.
During the 1700s, paint production underwent a transformation. The first American paint mill opened in 1700 in Boston, Mass. 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” 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. 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.
Decorating a home with paint became extremely popular in the 19th century. After all, paint made surfaces washable and, by sealing in wood’s natural oils, kept walls from becoming either too moist 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. 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 many of his contemporaries used it as well. 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.
Today, most house painting paints is acrylic, or water-based, although milk paint, popular in the 19th century for its subtle hues, has along with the darling of the sustainability movement thanks to its minimal environmental impact.
Los Angeles Painting has origins dating to pre-history.
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 accumulate 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 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.
Despite its outward simplicity, paint has adjusted over the millennium to conform to our aesthetic, financial, and health 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 good time it’s traveled to add a little beauty to your life…
Stay awhile and monkey around!