paints
Losing your marbles over bathroom wall paints
Next to kitchens, bathrooms are among the top ten of DIY decorator’s nightmares. If you get it right, your bathroom will be an exotic and calming retreat from the bustle of the outside world. Get it badly wrong and it will be a mildew-covered, smelly, damp dungeon that you want to avoid. The one area that might make a colossal difference is your choice of wall paints.
Lots of steam and the need for surfaces that can be easily cleaned can work against each other in the bathroom. Wall paint technology is a pretty complicated science but, put simply, if wall paint is glossy it will be hard wearing and more cleanable. On the downside, the glossier the wall paint, the more likely it is for walls to allow droplets of water to form. If you’re having a really hot bath, the droplets will be running down the walls. A matt paint, on the other hand, warms more quickly to the higher temperature of the steam in the room and, as a result, produces fewer water droplets. The problem with matt emulsion wall paints is that they stain easily and won’t stand tough cleaning.
There are two solutions for bathroom wall paints; either to have your painted surfaces well away from sinks, baths and showers so that you can use a breathable matt paint. Otherwise select from the extensive range of partial gloss finishes that are constantly being developed. Vinyl Satin and Vinyl Silk wall paints provide some of the advantages of matt paint and they have a wipe-clean surface that is more durable. For bathrooms that have ventilation problems or where the room does not have much of a chance to dry out between times, you’ll find specially formulated anti-condensation wall paints.
Having decided on the type of wall paint, all you need to do now is decide on color. Remember, it’s the smallest room in the house so light colored wall paint will help to make it look bigger than it really is. For the adventurous, there is the potential to create very individual effects using nothing more than wall paint. The exclusive marble bathrooms featured in the glossy magazines can be recreated very inexpensively. Use a base coat of white or off-white wall paint and three or four tonally close colors that you find in marbles. www.hkartprojects.co.uk/offshoots/marbledbathroomwall.htm shows just what can be done with a little artistry.