Breathable paints

[ab12]

Any suggestions for breathable paints for walls which are on the reasonably-priced side?

 

Earthborne, Farrow and Ball et al. paints are coming out about £100+ for 5 litre buckets.

 

Wouldn't mind so much if I need to do 1 room but with 6 rooms to cover and the hallway trying to see if a more economical option is available but with similar SD value to the above paints.

 

 

[Redbeard]

I don't know the relative SD values, but 'Contract Matt' is effectively designed for painting walls which shouldn't be painted yet.

[Roger440]

Limewash. Doesnt get cheaper or more breathable than that.

[JohnMo]

5 hours ago, ab12 said:

breathable paints for walls

 

So what happens when you sell, if you "need" breathable paint. And the next owner covers with normal emulsion paint?

 

What do you do with ceiling?

[ab12]

18 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

 

So what happens when you sell, if you "need" breathable paint. And the next owner covers with normal emulsion paint?

 

What do you do with ceiling?

Hoping wont need to sell. I should have explained that breathable IWI will be applied to solid wall hence the need for breathable paints.

 

Here's the plan for IWI:

a) Construct stud wall attached to lime plastered external walls using 3 by 2 treated stud timbers

b) Fill between studs with 50mm flexible wood fibre batts

c) Cover these with rigid wood fibre boards of 20mm thickness  and

d) Lime plaster  rigid wood fibre boards with Breathaplasta

e) Paint the lime plaster with breathable paints.

 

Critique of the above IWI is welcome.

[Roger440]

26 minutes ago, JohnMo said:

 

So what happens when you sell, if you "need" breathable paint. And the next owner covers with normal emulsion paint?

 

 

The new owners may well create a problem as the IWI build up will no longer be breathable. But thats on them

 

If you are nice, like i was, i left the next owners a "house book" advising them what to do and which walls it was applicable too.

[Jilly]

What about coloured clay plaster?

might be expensive but could be comparable to lime?

[Nick Thomas]

7 hours ago, ab12 said:

Earthborne, Farrow and Ball et al. paints are coming out about £100+ for 5 litre buckets.

 

I ended up using Farnovo dry paint, which is a bit cheaper than this, but not by a huge amount. They ship you 5kg of powder, you mix it with 3L of water to get ~5.5L of paint for ~£80, plus pigment. https://www.womersleys.co.uk/shop/paints/internal-paint/paints_for_internal_plaster/farnovo-dry-paint , https://www.womersleys.co.uk/Guides/TDS_DPM_Classic_Farnovo_en.pdf etc.

 

Good coverage, but you do need two coats on top of lime - the first one mixed relatively thin. You can mix it into a thick paste to fill cracks or do decorative work too.

 

Much cheaper, but I don't have any experience with it https://www.womersleys.co.uk/shop/paints/internal-paint/paints_for_internal_plaster/cornerstone-lime-paint

[torre]

We used Keim, which is similarly pricey but at least gives good coverage. We saved a bit by only using it on the external walls though.

[jfb]

18 hours ago, ab12 said:

Here's the plan for IWI:

a) Construct stud wall attached to lime plastered external walls using 3 by 2 treated stud timbers

b) Fill between studs with 50mm flexible wood fibre batts

c) Cover these with rigid wood fibre boards of 20mm thickness  and

d) Lime plaster  rigid wood fibre boards with Breathaplasta

e) Paint the lime plaster with breathable paints.

 

Critique of the above IWI is welcome.

Can’t you just cut out the stud wall section? Just use 60mm or 80mm wood fibre board fixed directly to the walls with plastic pins, render/plaster on top. I just used sand/lime for the render with mesh.

 

as to paint why not lime wash - you can buy large tubs of white and some powders for colour. Maybe a little restrictive in colour options but it’s pretty straight forward to apply so long as you wet the walls down before and as a bit after it has been applied. 

[lookseehear]

I often see distemper mentioned in the breathable paints discusssions.

[Mike]

2 hours ago, lookseehear said:

I often see distemper mentioned in the breathable paints discussions.

Yes, it was cheap and still common until the middle of the last century. My grandfather used to use it on his cottage.

[Mike]

It's not a cheap option, and it's applied as a plaster a few mm thick rather than as a paint, but tadelakt is another possibility. It's chalk-based, durable, vapour-permiable, antibacterial, fungicidal, can be tinted almost any colour with mineral pigments, and can be made waterproof (by rubbing it in olive oil soap) for use in bathrooms & showers. And apparently it can also be applied to plasterboard too.

 

Although the materials are relatively cheap, it's labour-intensive, so a premium finish unless you learn to apply it yourself. I'd like to get round to trying it one day.

[sgt_woulds]

www.paintzero.com

 

Make breathable paints that come as bags of powder - mix with water and off you go.

 

Seems quite a good idea as unused paint powder can be stored easily until it's needed again, unlike large tins of paint that can go wrong.

 

 

 

Crown were making bold claims, (probably still are) in their literature and website to push people to use their contract trade paints over freshly plastered walls as the paint was 'more breathable'.

I couldn't find anything in the datasheets or the tins that gave the Sd or mu values. After a lot of back and forth they finally said:


"We don’t measure the Sd value on our Trade paints as the paint will always have a low Sd value due to the nature of the paints.

A couple of years ago we measured the Sd value on Covermatt and Crown Trade Matt and both of these had a Sd value of approx. 0.060. The measurements were carried out in our R&D lab. Please see table below for Sd value and the classifications

Sd 0.060
Classification v 1 HIGH
Classification Sd 1 HIGH

The Covermatt, Trade Matt and Contract Matt are similar types of paints so I would expect the Contract Matt to have similar Sd value and classification as the other two paints." (sic)