When you’re choosing how to decorate your home, there are many different decisions that you will need to make. For instance, the type of furniture that you buy can be a huge statement in how you like your home to look – as well as even a reflection of your personality on a whole. On top of this, the wall decor that you choose is likely to influence the overall tone and feel of your home.
And certainly not least of all is the walls themselves. Much as your flooring can impact that overall look of your home, so to can the walls. Some people will choose to implement wallpaper or may even just keep the wallpaper that already existed in the home. Others, however, will be looking for a more modern look and are likely to choose various paints instead.
From porch and floor paint to paint for the nursery to paint for your living room and so on and so forth, there is a wide variety of paint out there today. Paint comes in different finishes and of course in different colors too. It’s made by different brands and comes at different price points. Even just choosing a paint can be a complex decision in and of itself.
It is particularly important, however, to choose a low VOC paint. A low VOC paint will prevent exposure to high levels of VOCS – volatile organic compounds. Recent research has found that the volatile organic compounds that are often found in pain can be hugely damaging. For children, the elderly, and those with weakened immune systems, this is only more so the case. Choosing a low VOC paint can help to negate many of these potential problems when it comes to the safety and overall health of your own home.
But first, it is of course highly important to understand the negative impacts that paints containing high levels of volatile organic compounds have been known to have. These paints are far too common as well, making the choosing of a low VOC paint for any painting project in your home environment all the more important – and all the more crucial to your health on a whole, as well as the health of your family members and loved ones.
For instance, if you choose a paint that is not a low VOC paint, the concentration of said volatile organic compounds can become intensive in any given room. In the top one fourth of these concentrations, the risk of developing asthma among children rises by a value that is more than one hundred percent. And when we look at the rise in the incidences of cases surrounding rhinitis and allergies, we see the same thing happening in direct correlation to the usage of paints that are not low VOC paint.
And the use of paint with high concentrations of volatile organic compounds is something that can impact adults as well, all too unfortunately. In fact, when office workers were removed from their traditional setting and worked instead in a room that was environmentally controlled for a mere six days, the results were astonishing. It was found that their average cognitive function improved by as much as one hundred percent, if not even more than that. Thanks to the constant presence of volatile organic compounds, their overall potential and brainpower was being diminished considerably.
Fortunately, there are a number of ways in which your exposure to volatile organic compounds can be reduced. Choosing a low VOC paint is one such way, as a low VOC paint will prevent you from introducing such harmful chemicals into your environment in the first place. But even if you didn’t know about low VOC paint before painting your home, there is no real reason to worry. This is because it has been found that volatile organic compounds will actually diminish over the course of a year. However, it will be important that you don’t pick new paint that has high concentrations of them, thus reintroducing them to your environment. Fortunately, low VOC paint has become more prevalent than ever before and much more accessible as well.
