(suprisingly) Our Hats Off To Lowe's Paint Dept

Spencer here,

So as Sarah and I prepare for our move to Riverside to start work on the Growcology project, we are sprucing up the place we are moving into in a few different ways. One of which is to paint the house. Determining which paint to use, factoring in our budget and environmental sensibilities, proved to be almost as much of a headache as breathing in the fumes of it in a poorly ventilated area.

That said, we have found ourselves on the other side of this conundrum with a bit of relief.

For those of you with a limited understanding of why most paint is the devil, here is a brief explanation of things to consider about paint:

Paint consists of three primary components. Binding agents, Pigment, and Solvents. All three of which can contain VOCs.

VOCs are Volatile Organic Compounds. They occur in all paint to some degree. They occur primarily in the binding agents. There is lots of reading to find on the internets about the stuff. In a nutshell, they are really really bad for you at best.

In addition to VOCs, another concern in paint can be different toxic pigmenting metals for colors such as yellow and red.

To be a green seal certified paint, a paint must have at less than 50 grams per litre VOCs. To be considered VOC free, it must contain less than 5 grams per litre.

Looking around at different brands of paint and trying to stay under 20 dollars a gallon for paint, without putting something on our walls that might be slowly poisoning us, here is what I have concluded.

There are lots of companies out there that offer a sliding scale: If you want environmentally friendly paint, you had better be ready to pay an upward of 30 to 50 dollars a gallon for something that may be a little runny and hard to apply.

After researching, the only company that I have found so far with a paint that is low voc and cheap is Olympic at Lowes. Olympic premium is rated at zero voc and we paid 15 dollars a gallon for flat and 20 for gloss, semi gloss, satin and egshell.

With that, I say to Lowe's: you may feel and smell like a Target as well as function like a Home Depot. But that said, you are the only one out there that didn't make me choose between affordability and eco-friendliness.