It's a very common question here on Re-nest: what's the best non-toxic paint? You want to paint your home, but you don't want the fumes to make you sick or off-gas for years to come. So, readers, we put together this top ten twelve list of what we think are some of the best no-VOC, non-toxic interior house paints...
According to the EPA, the average home's interior air is three times more polluted than outdoor air, and interior paints are often the prime suspect for the source of this indoor pollution. Volatile organic compounds can slowly off-gas for years after initial application, and thus, you can now purchase "non-toxic" formulas made from natural raw ingredients such as water, milk casein, natural latex, plant oils and resins, plant dyes and essential oils or with formulations containing VOCs in the range of 5 grams/litre or less per can (so technically, these do still contain toxic ingredients; adding a color tint usually brings the VOC level up to 10 grams/liter). Here are 12 interior paints with no or low VOCs and/or natural ingredients.
[from top left to right]
Benjamin Moore Aura and Natura: The Aura line is low VOC and the Natura line is no-VOC. Practically odorless, 100% acrylic paint and primer. Goes on smoothly, covers well, and and it dries in about an hour.
Bioshield Clay and Casein paints: natural raw ingredient paints; just add water to ready-to-mix powder. Be sure to check out their closeouts section (we like the Mandarin Milk Paint).
Yolo Colorhouse: water-based, Green Seal certified, and zero-VOC paint created by Portland, Oregon-based artists, Janie Young and Virginia Lowe. Available in a palette of 40 hues are specifically designed for interiors and categorized by nature's spectrum of air, grain, leaf, water, stone, clay and the bright hued petal range. And their packaging is really lovely.
Sherwin-Williams Harmony Interior Latex: A Good Housekeeping choice, the Harmony line uses sustainable raw materials, like soy and sunflower oil in their formulation to keep solvent content low and VOCs in the zero-VOC range. Advertised as mildew and bacteria resistant.
Green Planet Paints: Soy-based resins with clay formulations and mineral pigments keep this line of paint as organic as your farmer's market produce. We also like that they disclose all ingredients in their paint formulas right there on the can.
Homestead House Paint Company: a 100% acrylic paint formulated to perform well on top of existing previous applications and has the appearance of milk paint.
Dunn-Edwards EcoShield: an MPI Green Performance Standard rated product, the low odor EcoShield line was created initially for use in schools, hospitals, hotels, homes and other closed-ventilation buildings, and is ethylene glycol free.
Devoe Wonder Pure Interior Latex Odor-Free Paints: available in flat, eggshell and semi-gloss, the Devoe Wonder-Pure line is advertised as odor free and can be applied without sanding.
Olympic Premium: A Green Seal Certification "Class A" paint also awarded the Home Safety Council's Commendation Awards for Product Innovation for Consumer Safety.
Anna Sova Latex Wall Paint: the eco-branded Healthy Wall Finish contains 99% food grade ingredients, making this no-VOC paint a good choice for interior with children and pregnant women.
AFM Safecoat: AFM Safecoat has really great palettes. We also use them for all of our bases and white trim paint. They have a no-VOC line called Ayurveda Essence that has fantastic colors (108 of them!). AFM Safecoat's paints come in flat, eggshell, and semi-gloss.
Mythic Paint: Mythic Paint has a huge amount of colors available, and they're all fantastic. Our editors have used them plenty of times and they're a running favorite. Non-toxic, ultra low odor paint.
Do you have a favorite eco-friendly paint?
Related Links:
How To: Buy the right amount of paint
Good Questions: Low VOC Paint?
Small Cool Lessons: Discovering Small Space Design Ideas That Really Work
Marisa and Peter's Playfully Eclectic Home
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Sheex Bedding
How to Make Fresh Pasta Dough in the Food Processor
We are renovating our foreclosed house on a tight budget, and I have used Lowes' Olympic Premium everywhere we have painted. It is a fantastic paint with great coverage and a brilliant range of colours. But the best thing about it is the price tag - around $20 a gallon. I'll stop now as I sound like I work at Lowes!
we just bought a house and are using olympics premium paint as well and i agree its great! i was a little hesitant because i read mixed reviews- and because its lowes lower price paint, but it had a great assortment of colors (much better than home depots lower priced paint- glidden) and has been covering pretty well! dont know if they are still doing it but last week there were printable rebates for olympic paint on your lowes.
one question though- one of the girls at the paint desk was telling another customer that once you add color tint to the olympic paint its no longer low voc- is that true???
I used the Lowe's Olympic Premium in two rooms and a third color for trim work. The nearly complete lack of odor was great for painting a bedroom in the winter when windows could only be kept open during the day. But the coverage seemed to vary more by color than it should have- a dark color on a primer coat went on easily and needed only one coat and spot touch ups. A light color over the same light color had poor consistency and less than great coverage. The trim work white was just fine. Overall though, I would use it again.
As the list shows, there are quite a few brands that offer low-VOC and no-VOC paint. What about good low-VOC wood stains? I have been greatly disappointed with the ones I've tried, and hope some of you folks might know good options.
It is true that the pigments for Olympic are not Low-VOC. If you choose any color other than white or a very light tint the "green-ness" of the paint is compromised. Fresh Aire at Home Depot has no-VOC pigments as does Benjamin Moore, AFM, Mythic, Anna Sova. I'm not sure about Sherwin-Williams. Ask them.
Oh, and I've spoken with Dunn Edwards. Their paints are not really Low-VOC.
We used Mythic in every room in our home and the colors are beautiful. However, it is very expensive and took quite a bit more work than we've ever invested in paint before. My living room alone, with primer, has five coats on it before we achieved full coverage. And even then, the effect is still kind of white-washed. But we were painting over orange (including an orange fireplace) and taking it to a light turquoise...
jzer7 - Vermont Natural Coatings is a low VOC stain and was listed as one of BuildingGreen 2008s top 10 products.
http://www.vermontnaturalcoatings.com/
Also Bona's wood floor products are awesome.
http://store.mybonahome.com/Finish.aspx
I painted my whole house with Benjamin Moore Natura and it is fantastic. I'd call it no odor, with excellent coverage.
I've had good experiences with Benjamin Moore Natura paint: full coverage with 2 coats, huge color selection, no odor. But it's a bit pricey at around $50/gallon.
I used Benjamin Moore Aura to repaint 2 bookcases. Both were previously painted black (one with latex and one with spray paint). The guy in the store told me I'd need to prime them first but I'm lazy so I just put my new blue paint on them without a primer. The color is vibrant, I got great coverage, there was no smell and it dried quickly! I'm about to move into a new apartment and I'm definitely going to look at the Benjamin Moore Aura paints for painting the place!
We have had really great results and only needed to use one coat with Freshaire paint, which we nabbed from Home Depot. We claimed we wouldn't use it twice if it didn't deliver results... but it looks amazing on our walls.
This is a great list, put together with the consumer in mind! Well done on accumulating a list worthy of publication in any green home improvement publication!!!
Imago Dei | Murals • Finishes • Art
http://www.imagodei.pro
The pigment does add VOC in most 'low VOC' paints. The darker the colour, the higher the VOC's. But Olympic is still 'low VOC' with colour - it is just not NO VOC like Natura. I believe that even BM Aura pigments have VOCs. I am using a black Olympic paint right now and it has almost no odour, but definitely more than the lighter colours.
We just painted our whole house in Olympic Premium and Safecoat paints. I HIGHLY preferred the Olympic, even disregarding the fact that it is less than half the price. It had almost no odor (Safecoat had some), and it laid down much more nicely than the Safecoat, which was pretty blotchy on the first coat. The Safecoat "eggshell" turned out to be what I would call a satin or semigloss. I used it in my kids' room and it is seriously shiny. For other rooms where I was using Safecoat, I ended up having to buy both "matte" and "eggshell" and mix them to achieve what I would call an eggshell finish. Too much trouble and too much money for an inferior product.
If you live in Canada, the best paint I've ever used in the Homestead House Paint VOC Free latex. It has an amazing high quality finish, great coverage and is super-durable.
I used it directly over oil (no primer, but a light sanding) in my bathroom and it still looks brand new six months later. I just painted over my melamine kitchen cabinets and the oil wall paint and it did a great job there too.
Their store is in Toronto, but they deliver to anywhere in Canada (and the U.S. too).
All I can say about Olympic paint is, I will ALWAYS use the paint, for the rest of my life. It is so non-toxic... you can eat it! Ok, you shouldn't eat it, but my 10 month old son got into the paint while we redoing the living room, and when I found him he was sucking on a wet paintbrush! We rushed him to the emergency room (bringing the paint can with us), and I was so scared I was shaking, but they told us at the ER that the paint was so non-toxic they didn't need to do anything. The worst we should expect was a tummy ache and some very colorful poo :) It's also easy to find (they have it at Lowe's) and inexpensive (20$).
I've used Olympic and Ben Moore Natura and much prefer the Moore paint. More saturated colors, beautiful finish. But you pay more for it. I've had them match up a Behr color and it was perfect...AND no voc's!!!!
yikes, hate reading about this - I get so paranoid because my apartment was painted before we moved in... does this mean that we're still breathing in fumes? I'm sure the building management didn't use anything eco-friendly... what's more, if I paint over it with a zero VOC paint, can that affect the harmful chemicals in the paint already on my walls? don't want to make it worse...
I recently used Sherwin Williams new line of Emerald paint, and LOVE IT! It's zero VOC, but has superb performance. What made it even greener was that I used far less than expected because it only required one coat.
http://bonnieprojects.blogspot.com/2012/08/choosing-paint-colors.html
That is quite correct. Additionally, from a painter's perspective, Olympic paint drags and actually does not have nearly the coverage as compared to products from Sherwin Williams or especially Ben Moore. Lowe's colorants are not 0%VOC and will add, based on the darkness of the color, up to 25 grams/liter of VOCs. I am not a big fan of the big box paints, even though many of them are rated quite highly by Consumer report.