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., 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. At the turn of the 14th century, house painters in England created guilds, which established standards for the profession and kept trade secrets under lock and key. 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. 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.
Even colonial Puritanism, however, failed to silence the demand for house paint. 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.
From the 17th century until the 19th, oil and water were the primary bases for paint production. Each naturally held some colors more than others, and there were differences in the durability and coat, depending on which mixture was used. Water-based paints were used for ceilings and plaster walls, and oils were used for joinery. 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. 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. Well-ground pigment tends to disperse almost completely 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. The United States finally banned the usage of lead in house paint in 1978.
During the 1700s, paint production underwent a transformation. In 1700 in Boston, MA, the first American paint mill opened its doors. 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. Paint mills were no exception; at this point in time, most of them ran on steam. Nontoxic zinc oxide became a usable base for white pigment, thanks to the Europeans, during this time; 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.
It was in the 19th century that decorating a home with paint became the norm rather than an outlier. After all, paint made surfaces washable and, by sealing in wood’s natural oils, kept walls from becoming either too moist or too dry.
In 1866, a future titan of the paint business, Sherwin-Williams Paint, was born. The company was the first maker of ready-to-use paint; its original product, raw umber in oil, debuted 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 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.
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 become the darling of the sustainability movement thanks to its minimal environmental impact.
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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 have allergies and/or chemical sensitivity, Low VOC Paint are a must. In fact, they offer practical advantages no matter what your circumstances, since their lack of strong odor lets you occupy freshly painted rooms relatively soon.
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 time it’s traveled to add a little beauty to your life.
