Breathe in, breathe out
Like many of you, I live in a very old house. It is a townhouse, with a basement kitchen and vaults. Because of its age (1766) combined with an inherited ‘modern’ decorating approach, it had and felt damp.
Hands up if you know this feeling. It’s hideous.
Walls were painted with acrylic paint or covered in vinyl paper. It had very poor heating, blocked up fireplaces and windows that didn’t open. Plus a few decades of no maintenance. It wasn’t fall-down terrible, just grim. If I was a rooky restorer, I may have been led down the damp course, stain blockers, ‘that’ aisle of the DIY store, and re-plastering route. Using chemicals and intervention where it wasn’t needed.
Our home just wanted to breathe, which is easy, but labour intensive to fix. We stripped off the 1980’s vinyl wallpaper, scraped off old (and pretty toxic paint), restored the windows, opened said windows and put in a great heating system. And then we painted it with our Bio based True Matt Emulsion. Two years later there is no damp, our house smells and feels clean, dry and warm.
An ‘old’ house is defined as one is made of a solid walled structure, built using breathable materials, that need to breathe. And here is the vital and simple nugget of information. A home has to breathe to stay solid, warm and dry. Any paint that prevents a wall from breathing, traps moisture behind it and causes damp.
A fresh coat of paint doesn’t fix it – remember those student flats? The mould still haunts me.
For a home to breathe, you need to use materials that allow moisture to move through the fabric of the building. For walls this is either clay or lime plaster, then properly breathable paint.
Breathable paint is a term you will be hearing more, but I ask you to listen carefully.
It is a term we use because we know our paint is really, properly breathable and it does exactly what you need a breathable paint to do.
There are a variety of ways to measure material breathability. I think the simplest to understand is SD values. This measures the paints resistance to water vapour moving through it. The higher the number, the more difficult it is for the vapour to get through. So if it can’t get through, it stops and the soggy path towards damp begins. The lower the number, means the breathability and moisture regulation improves. Less is always more.
You may have heard the magic figure of ‘under 1’ as where paint becomes breathable. It isn’t quite that simple, but it can be.
SD Class 1 - less than 0.14 is the best of the best. If you need or want breathability this is the marker you should always choose your paint from. Our True Matt Emulsion is measured at 0.004, our Steadfast Matt Emulsion is 0.0615, and our Wood & Metal finishes are 0.1 - for which I am very proud.
They are all perfect for old and historic buildings, as well as homes built from breathable materials. But they are also fantastic for many of us who live within the mix of old and new. They all offer the best moisture regulation, damp prevention, and resistance to mould and the dreaded structural damage.
I am particularly geeky about the material intelligence of what we make. I love that our paint can be in modern flats, historic homes, hospitals, and garden sheds.
Cassandra x