Want to improve you home's air quality? Use Low or No-VOC Paint!

Diane, I have to say I paid more money for these and they were not all that they said....the odors were every bit as bad and I'm thankful I was out of the house.  Maybe they emit less time--but I used paints by Benjamin Moore and Sherwin Williams and it was unbearable in there for me.

Diane - Now this is something I did not know.  I plan on trying to make my home more energy efficient as I move forward.  There will probably come a time in the near future where I re-paint parts of my home, I will definitely keep this in mind.  In fact, when I'm ready to make some changes and advancements, I may be giving you a call:-)

We just painted our office and the odor took several days to subside. I would but the low VOC paint next time even if the odor was bad.

Diane, we did use low VOC paint on the office - (guess who did the painting? 8-). It was Benjamin Moore's new Aura paint. Awesome paint, I would recommend it for high traffic areas for its cleanability. I didn't smell anything nasty - geez, the paint dries in less than 30 minutes. 

Nice article, we should all be more aware of the things we use and bring into our home.

Thanks for the handy list!  This is getting to be an item of great interest in our industry.

Personally, I'm a big fan of both Aura and AFM Safecoat (Mythic would need to be shipped a ridiculous distance to get to me in Edmonton). There are many more true 0-VOC paints from small manufacturers advertised in the pages of Natural Home magazine or stocked on the shelves of your closest green building supply specialists who are not listed here. A couple that spring to mind are C2's LoVo, and Yolo Colorhouse. haven't used them so I can't vouch for them, but they have a good reputation in green building circles.

To everyone who says they still had odor with their low-VOC paint: the trick is to find a manufacturer who also has a 0-VOC colorant system. By the time most manufacturers add even modest amounts of pigment to the can, they've added significant solvent concentrations to it. ALSO, the original legal definition of Volatile Organic Solvents from the EPA had to do with making ground-level ozone (aka smog), NOT their long-term effect on human health (think: sick building syndrome). So, technically a paint can be 0-VOC and still smell because it has lots of exempted solvents in it.

Also consider American Clay earth plaster as an alternative product to milk paint, especially if you're doing a nursery or have a chemically-sensitive client.

What a great list you have compiled, it's nice to see all of them in one place!  There are two other paint companies that may be of interest to youl.  Yolo Paints  www.yolocolorhouse.com  has a beautiful palette and is entirely VOC free.

Many of the paint companies listed are only NO VOC for the paint base.  The colorants or tints still have the same VOC's as before.  Yolo's colorants are VOC free as well.  The same with No VOC Glidden, which is the paint sold at Home Depot.

Lowe's has a No VOC paint by Olympic as well and it is the most well priced of all. 

www.yolocolorhouse.com