Updated: VOC Free Paint

When my wife became pregnant, we knew that we needed to paint the nursery. I did a lot of research to try to figure out what was the best kind of paint to use. There are the traditional paints, low VOC paint, no VOC paint, and Old Fashioned Milk Paint.
Since I knew the dangers of traditional paint I wanted to make sure that we only used no VOC paint. I did not want the baby or my pregnant wife having to breath in the fumes. We first went to the local chain paint store where the sales rep tried to tell us not to use the VOC paint they carry. He claimed that it was very streaky and did not cover very well. Even if it did not cover as well, I still did not want the toxins in the nursery. My wife’s and babies health was much more important. We took swatches home but decided to go to a different store to buy the paint.

Once we decided on a color we needed to go buy the paint. So the day before we had people coming over to help us do the painting we went to Home Depot to get their Freshaire Choice paint. This paint is great because it does not contain any VOC’s in it. One of the down falls of no VOC paint is that as soon as it is colored the tint will add some VOC into the paint. So, when you are looking for VOC free paint make sure that the tint is also VOC free. When we got to Home Depot, we looked around the paint department but could not find the Freshaire Choice paint. We asked the sales rep and he claimed that they do not carry anything like that. So, off we went to yet another store in our search for VOC free paint.

This store carries two lines of VOC free paint. Not only is the paint VOC free but so is the tint! We wanted to try a paint called BioShield Paint since it is pre colored and is Zero-VOC and Solvent-Free. Unfortunately, they only had a very little bit in stock and it was not the colors that we were looking for. They also had something that is called milk paint from the The Old Fashioned Milk Paint Co., Inc. This product was very interesting to me since it is all natural and it is the kind of paint that people have been using for thousands of years! One nice thing about this paint is that since it is in a powered form you can literally make any color from it that you want! The problem we had is that we never mixed paint before and did not want to experiment with the baby’s room. We also had to pre and post treat the walls in order to make sure that the paint looked it is best. If we sell our house or need to do any painting, we will definitely try out these paints.

Lowes was about our last hope. We knew that my dad and step mom were coming the next day to help us paint so we needed to have paint for them to use. Lowes has a zero VOC Olympic brand paint. The sales woman was very helpful so this is the paint we used. Unfortunately, we needed to add the tint to the paint so it is not perfect but it worked well. The paint might have been slightly thinner then traditional paints but it covered great. Even with putting two coats on the room, the odor was minimum. If you were in the room or just out side the room, you could tell we were painting but the rest of the house had zero smell.

I would recommend this paint but if you wanted a truly zero VOC paint one of the other ones listed above or in this list would be what you want. In addition, if you do want a truly zero VOC paint I would make sure you get it early. I would hate to see you have to drive all over looking for your Zero VOC paint.