How to Paint Your Home the Eco-Friendly Way

I’ve painted a lot of walls in my life and know what to look for when choosing eco-friendly interior paint. Gone are the days when you needed to air out your home for days or even weeks. These days, non-toxic paint is readily available, if you know where to look.

Whatever your theme, style, and budget, you can make your paint job:

• Climate friendly
• Safe and non-toxic.

Let’s start with a look at potential painting pitfalls, before you rush to choose your color scheme.

Problems with paint

Many interior paints comprise a long list of potentially toxic chemicals. The trouble is that it’s rare to find these conveniently listed on the side of the can.

Paint ingredients often include volatile organic compounds such as:

• Formaldehyde
• Toluene
• Benzene
• Styrene
• Xylene.

These VOCs are also often present glue, lacquer, engineered wood, and also in mattresses, other furniture, and textiles such as carpets, upholstery, and drapes. They are also found in stuffed toys, nursery decals, mobiles, and other decorations.

Unfortunately, VOC levels are often much higher in a nursery than elsewhere in the home because of freshly painted walls and new furniture and furnishings all off-gassing VOCs at the same time. Some of these chemicals are known carcinogens, while other chemicals in paint include petroleum-derived polyurethane and hormone-disrupting phthalates, as well as animal-derived ingredients like casein (from milk), beeswax, and shellac, which aren’t necessarily toxic but take their own environmental toll.

Quick-drying paints are most likely to contain higher levels of VOCs and animal-derived products, but if paint manufacturers aren’t forced to list the full ingredients on the can, how can you tell if paint is problematic?

How to choose eco-friendly & non-toxic paint

In general, if a tin of paint has an EPA, OHSA, or DOT registration number, this means it contains at least one chemical known to be toxic and that has to be monitored.

Similarly, a warning that a product must be disposed of as hazardous waste strongly suggests there are toxic chemicals in the paint.

You can also ask a company for the safety data sheets (SDS) and environmental data sheets (EDS) for their products. Some of the more reputable companies already offer these on their websites, though it can take a bit of digging to track them down. Be sure you’re looking at the correct data sheets for the product you’re considering purchasing; some sheets cover multiple products but only for the base paint without tint.

While you’re checking the data sheets, look for terms such as ‘aquatic toxicity,’ ‘carcinogen,’ and ‘respiratory irritant.’ A quick scan for these key words can help you find potentially troublesome ingredients quickly, without needing to read through the whole document.

In general, though, your best bet is to choose paint that contains no VOCs, even when tinted. This means less risk of health hazards for you and your family and less risk to the environment overall.

If you can’t find a truly zero-VOC paint, your next best option is a low-VOC paint that is Greenguard Gold certified. If you’re using anything other than a zero-VOC paint, make sure the room is well ventilated as you paint. Don’t paint while pregnant or with an infant, small children, or pets in the room, and be sure to air out the room for several days before it is used.

How much paint do you really need?

Once you’ve picked your zero-VOC paint, there are other ways to make the whole painting adventure even more eco-friendly. One way is to measure the room.

Seriously.

If you calculate the area you actually need to paint, you can make sure not to overbuy, saving you money and saving a lot of paint going to waste. If you’re only painting one small wall, you might find that a generous sample tin can cover everything!

See Also: The 21 Best Eco-Friendly & Non-Toxic Art Supplies for Kids

To figure out how much paint you need for a wall, multiple the wall’s height by its width. If you’re painting multiple walls, do this for each wall and add up the resulting numbers for a total area.

One gallon typically covers about 400 square feet.

So, take your area total and divide it by 400 to get a rough estimate of how many gallons of paint you’ll need.

Use primer

Next, consider using a primer. This thicker, more opaque paint can help reduce how much paint you need overall, because it can quickly cover a darker color. Otherwise, you may find that the original color still shows through after three coats of flat or eggshell paint.

If you are using primer, be sure to check the data sheets to make sure this is also zero-VOC as primer contains more of the neutral pigment than eggshell or flat.

If you’re not sure what you’ll need, call your local paint store. The staff at these stores are often your best option for advice as they have very likely used the paint you’re considering and have had customers tell them the pros and cons of different brands over the years.

As with any project, planning ahead and doing your research can help keep your costs, both financial and environmental, to a minimum.

Other ways to eco-proof your paint job

Eco-friendly paint clean-up

When you are done with your project and need to wash your brushes and rollers, don’t forget that you can keep things eco-friendly by:

1. Reusing turpentine and paint thinner – save what you use and store it in a closed, labeled container. Wait until the sediment settles, pour off the clear thinner and save for use next time.
2. Skipping turps or paint thinner when possible – use water and soap for zero-VOC water-based paint clean-up.
3. Avoiding cleaning your brushes and rollers unless and until you absolutely have to (more on this below!)
4. Using a bucket to wash out brushes, instead of just running water down the sink.
5. Emptying clean-up water from the bucket into a sealable vessel. Take it with you to the recycling or garbage depot along with your empty cans of paint.
6. Storing leftover paint properly – seal the cans well and store them upside down; this helps prevent air from getting in, which keeps paint fresh.

I spent weeks painting wall after wall in my new house, doing a little bit here and there after work each day, but I probably washed out my roller and brushes just a couple of times because I was using the same color and type of paint for most walls.

The trick is to:

• Wrap up the rollers and brushes tightly in plastic
• Squeeze out any air
• Seal the bags and store the paint supplies in a dark, cool place until you’re ready to roll again.

Plastic food bags destined for the recycling were the ideal fit to slide onto a roller. I used bread bag ties to seal the top. (Be sure to wash out any food bags first, so you don’t paint crumbs onto your walls!)

Use cling-wrap if you have to, but reuse plastic packaging if you have it lying around.

Once you’re definitely done with painting, remember that even non-toxic, water-based paints can damage the health of waterways. Take care to dispose of excess paint and clean-up supplies properly.

What to do with leftover paint

If you’ve got a little bit of paint left and don’t think you’ll use it in the future (and it’s too paltry to give away), don’t pour the remnants down the sink or into a drain. Instead, put the paint somewhere warm and dry and remove the lid. The paint will dry up and you can then treat it as solid waste.

If you have a lot of paint left over and you’re not going to need it, here are some ideas:

• Look for community organizations that take paint to use in supportive housing projects
• List the paint on Freecycle or for free on social marketplaces
• Ask friends, family, and colleagues to see if anyone needs paint for a smaller project
• See if community projects take leftover paint to use in covering graffiti.

Habitat for Humanity ReStore sometimes take paint, for example. The organization PaintCare also manages local paint recycling programs in a handful of states, and you can take leftover paint to a drop-off site for safe disposal, recovery, or reuse.