The formulation solution

Take a deep breath: improve your indoor air quality

Did you know that the air you breathe inside your house can be worse than the one you breathe in a city centre? Several sources can cause poor indoor air quality, but formulating your indoor paints with the right raw materials can help.

Indoor Air Quality - Let’s look into the facts:

The levels of several organic compounds average 2 to 5 times higher indoor than outdoor

Studies have found that during and after certain activities, such as paint stripping, the levels can be 1,000 times more than the background outdoor levels.

82% of global consumers consider that no odour when drying is a quality for interior paint

Safety is the 2nd most important attribute to consumers when purchasing interior paints

Poor indoor air quality is understood to reduce cognitive functioning, productivity, and wellbeing

formulation options and their challenges

Formulating indoor paints

Moving to low-VOC (Volatile Organic Compounds) and low odour formulations is proving a game-changer for an improved indoor experience. Several raw materials serve to achieve that goal, however changing your formulation is not an overnight step, and we know it.

Most challenging to formulate

Switching to low-VOC resins
Changing the resin of your paint can lead to adjustments of other raw materials in the formulation, such as the defoamer, the rheology modifiers, and the coalescing agents. That is why switching your formulation to a binder with low-VOC content is usually perceived as complicated, costly, or even that the results can lack quality. However, with the right formulation that perception can be changed.
Switching to low-VOC resins is an efficient way to reduce drastically the levels of VOC of your paint as well as the odour and the emissions while maintaining its good performance.

Show me your solution

Easier to formulate

person with light blue gloves in a lab applying thin layer of red paint

Add coalescing agents with zero VOC

Coalescing agents are the raw material that adds the most VOC to the paint formulation. If you prefer to continue using your current resin and still create a low-VOC / low odour paint you can do it by adding coalescing agent with zero VOC. With a drop-in replacement, this shift is considered easy and fast. However, the quantities might be optimized at the end to achieve the desired performance.

Show me your solution

person with blue gloves in a lab mixing and preparing pigment for formulations

Swapping your pigment preparations

The tinting and the compatibility between the pigment paste and the paint can be challenging. Suitable for in-plant and point-of-sale tinting, pigment preparations with zero VOC can be a good alternative to your formulation. They offer performance, colourful results, low odour, and environmental labels.

Show me your solution

reflection from a red colored jar in lab environment

Shifting to other additives

Besides coalescing agents, other additives can add to the total VOC and odour of the final paint. pH adjusters, for example, are quite often based on amine-technology which is known to be smelly. However, switching the pH adjusters to another technology enables the reduction of odour and VOC level of your final paint at the same time.

Show me your solution

Formulation made simple

Take a deep breathe again: Improve indoor air quality

Did you know that the air you breathe inside your house is worse than the one you breathe in a city centre? Several sources are pointed to cause poor indoor air quality. Formulating decorative paints with the right ingredients can be one of the solutions.