Painting your home is one of the best ways to keep it in good shape. From switching the colors of your walls to wondering do I need varnish, there are many considerations to make when it comes to the various aspects of painting your home. For instance, the question of do I need varnish is a common one, with many people wondering do I need varnish when making small changes and improvements throughout their homes.
Fortunately, the question of do I need varnish can typically be answered at your local paint supply store, and asking a salesperson this question of do I need varnish will likely get you an answer that you need. Though do I need varnish is only just one question that you might have, there are now more resources for home improvement projects than ever before, from simple ones, like do I need varnish, to question that are considerably more complex and involved.
In addition to deciding on things like do I need varnish and the like, the average home owner will also need to make a decision on wall colors instead, and on whether paint or wallpaper will be used. For many people, paint is the easy choice, as it will be less likely to seem outdated and can easily be changed, whereas wallpaper can sometimes prove quite difficult to remove. Paint color matters too, as it has even been discovered that a bathroom that is painted blue can raise the selling price of any given home by a truly astounding $5,400, which is certainly quite considerable to say the least.
Of course, the type of paint that you choose matters. Paint types will vary in quality and style – but they can also vary in safety as well, something that not enough people are actually actively aware of here in the United States and likely beyond it as well. This is due to the fact that some paints, from paint for decks to paint coverage for walls, can contain volatile organic compounds, which are also known as VOCs. And these volatile organic compounds can lead to a number of health issues for people all throughout the country – and of all ages.
It is children, as one might suspect, that are likely to be the most susceptible to these volatile organic compounds, something that makes sense, as children tend to have lower resistances to such things, just as they have lower immune systems than the typical healthy adult living here in the United States. In fact, the kids who live in rooms in the top quarter of highest concentrations of these volatile organic compounds, the rates of developing asthma and developing eczema both jump by as much as 100% – by more than 100%, as a matter of fact. In addition to this, the chances of developing rhinitis climb by an unprecedented more than 300%, meaning that the average child living in such a space is likely to be dealing with a myriad of health concerns, even if they aren’t necessarily life threatening ones.
But this certainly does not mean that adults cannot be impacted by the volatile organic compounds that can be found in various types of paint. As a matter of fact, they very much can. Such can be seen in a study that was done by the TIEQ lab, located at the Syracuse Center of Excellence. In this study, a group of office workers were moved from their typical office environment to an environmentally controlled one.
The results were, in a word, simply astonishing. In this study, it was found that the average cognitive ability improved by over 100% for this population of office workers, simply from working in an environmentally controlled office space. For many people, this clearly shows the impact that volatile organic compounds can have in your home and even in the places where you work.
Fortunately, there are ways to mitigate these effects, such as choosing non-toxic paint. From non toxic spray paint to non toxic paint for crib, the paint that you use for everything from priming a floor to painting your walls should be low in VOCs.