Many, many months ago, I was sent some Nature Paint to review on the blog. I thought, ooh, I'll decorate the kitchen!
And then, I put the paint on the floor behind the sofa, and forgot about it.
Periodically, when I was looking for a lost remote, I would stumble across the paint and think, ah, that's far too much work, I'll think about it next week...
Well, this week I thought about it. I was so bored of being stuck in the house with a grouchy, poorly S, I decided to make my kitchen look a bit nicer...
Nature Paint is a Cornish company who manufacture natural paint. It is the first and only paint to be awarded a Zero VOC symbol.
What does that mean? VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compounds. Or to you and me, that painty smell.
Nature Paint is marketed as a paint you could use to decorate a child's bedroom, and then put them to bed in their new room that night - because there's no smell.
Also, because the paint is natural, the colour pigment continues to develop over a few weeks. I'm looking forward to seeing how my kitchen changes colour!
The paint comes in tubs of powder, which you mix with warm water. Like the old powder poster paints at school, remember?
To be honest, I think it was the mixing that put me off using it for so long - I thought it would be messy, and would ruin my food mixer and whatever else I used to mix it with and in. Turns out, I needn't have worried. The paint has washed off without a trace, even from the bucket I kept it in for 3 days! First gold star.
The second gold star came when I got half way through painting my kitchen, and realised... hang on... this paint doesn't smell! I don't mean the smell isn't bad, or it smells but not too much, I mean there is no smell. Once you've mixed the paint, you can keep it for up to three days, and by the third day it did smell a bit - but not like paint paint. It smelled like the storage cupboard in the art room at school. Not like flowers or nice perfume or anything, but also not so unpleasant that you couldn't stay in the room. And to be fair, that smell had gone within an hour of my finishing painting.
I painted half the kitchen on the first night, and the rest on the second night. On the third night, there was the tiniest little bit of paint left in the bottom of the bucket, and it had gone a bit jellified, which was irritating - but I think if there had been more of it left overnight, it might have fared better. And it still worked fine for covering missed patches on the walls (yeah, I'm that good at painting).
This is what the press release says:
Made from only naturally, non toxic and locally sourced ingredients such as china clays from Cornwall, along with exotic pigments including French ochres and Italian Sienna, NaturePaint’s emulsions are both washable and sustainable, whilst still providing vibrant colour and high quality coverage.
I have to say, I am very impressed with this paint. I thought, with it being natural, non-toxic and all that jazz, the paint quality might be a bit below par - but actually it was great. It was just as easy to use as any other paint, and if anything, it was easier to wash off my face/hair/clothes/kitchen surfaces/floor (obviously, I deliberately spilled paint in these places, to fully test it for this review).
So, what does my shiny new kitchen look like?
*drum roll*
NaturePaint is currently available for
purchase online at NaturePaint.com, JohnLewis.com, B&Q (DIY.com) and Brewers (designerpaints.com)
Disclaimer: I received 2 packets of Nature Paint in return for writing this review. The free paint was not dependent on my writing a favourable review, though.
Thank you for reading. If you have enjoyed this post, please share it with your friends using the buttons below.
Other reviews by Single Mother Ahoy:
Non toxic paint can only be a good thing right? :) We are hoping to decorate a couple of rooms in the not too distant future.
ReplyDeleteLiving room, and we are swapping our bedroom with the boys' now baby Connor is getting bigger - so the boys will be sharing.
I'd definitely recommend Nature Paint then - honestly, no paint smell at all. And the colour does develop and get darker over the next few days. Don't be put off by having to mix it!
Delete