House Paint Odors: Get Rid Of The Smell
Homeowners, especially those with young children, often ask me how to get rid of paint odors. It’s such a big concern for some people that they’ll ask me about possible odor control before they even book the paint quote.
The good news is that the evolution of house paint has come a long way with low-odor lines and even no odor for some applications. The bad news is that there are still plenty of reasons to use the smelly stuff, especially if you’re painting an old house. Alkyd (oil-based) and shellac or alcohol primers are especially effective at sealing water damage and old oil-painted surfaces for enhancement with latex topcoats. But they are also very smelly with potentially long lasting fumes. Even the most common low-odor alkyd paints used today for repainting woodwork can have a lingering odor for days in the most ventilated conditions.
So how do you get rid of the smell?
I just got an email from a mom asking me that very question. Her young son’s room was painted nearly two weeks ago and she has left the windows open and the fan on ever since. Still, the paint smell is strong enough that you’re worried about letting the kid sleep in the room. The painting in this room required a lot of primer to cover the dark brown oil paint used by the previous owner of the house. Since there was a need to lighten the color and convert the surfaces to a much more environmentally friendly acrylic latex, a common top brand alkyd primer was used to give the entire room a fresh start. And even though it had “Low Odor” printed on the can, it was obviously NOT odorless. To complicate matters, all the woodwork had to be finished with a leading “low odor” brand of Alkyd semi gloss that produced a smooth, glossy finish as well as a migraine-inducing vapor.
So what can you do? Well, there are a few ways to overcome these situations beyond the obvious ventilation to control, eliminate, and even prevent odors from lingering.
“An ounce of prevention”… Before “low-odor paint” existed, we used to add a dash of vanilla extract to each gallon of oil paint to make it “low-odor.” It was cheap, easy to do, and had no effect on the color. Now that low-odor alkyd paints are common on the market, adding a tablespoon of vanilla extract makes them virtually odorless.
However, as in the previous case, the painting is already done. It’s too late for vanilla and the smell won’t go away as fast as they’d like. What happens here is that the odors get trapped on the walls while the paint dries and probably on all the fabrics and carpets in the room as well. They need something else to absorb them forever. So this is what I advised him to do. Cut up some onions and place them in a couple of bowls of cold water. Put one of the bowls in the room and the other in the closet. As simple and crazy as it sounds, onions absorb and remove paint fumes and odors…sometimes as quickly as overnight!
I first learned this trick while creating a baby’s room about 17 years ago. I spent about 5 weeks converting an old dusty and crumbling attic into a nursery awaiting the birth of the baby. And it turned out that the baby was born about two weeks early and was ready to go home just as I was finishing up the project. The job required a lot of smelly primers and sealers to bury decades of neglect and water damage. As was the custom in those days, I added vanilla extract to minimize the smell of the paints (and the damage to my brain cells), but the smell didn’t clear up quickly enough to bring in the newborn. The homeowner’s nanny, who was moving into the next room (and who was also concerned about the smell), used a couple bowls of chopped onions in cold water overnight and the smell was gone the next day . I could not believe it!
I have recommended this technique ever since with great results. But it should be noted here that this example was in an empty room. In the case of a fully furnished room, like in our case above, you should consider airing out clothing, curtains, rugs, or anything else that might trap odors and give them a shot or two of Febreeze to do the trick today. .
Now sometimes there are extreme cases where scents just aren’t an option. Some people are highly allergic to VOCs (volatile organic compounds) in paints and the dyes used to color them. Some can get quite sick from even short-term inhalation of the vapors. In these cases, you have to resort to the whole range of tricks:
- Before painting, empty the room completely to make sure there is nothing to trap odors.
- Open all windows before opening paint cans and keep them open throughout the painting process.
- Add vanilla extract to your Alkyd, Alcohol or Shellac based paints. (Latex paints generally don’t need this step since they are relatively low-odor to begin with.)
- Place several bowls of onions around the room (as above) while you paint to absorb the fumes as they escape.
- When you’re done painting, seal and remove all paint cans, wrap the protective sheets in plastic before taking them out to the rest of the house (or throw them out the window if possible) to prevent trapped fumes from spreading. indoors.
- Refresh your supply of onions in water, as the old ones will have filled with fumes by the time you finish painting.
- Keep the windows open and wait until the paint has completely dried and the odors have disappeared before putting furniture and other belongings back.
Of course, these tips are offered in relation to interior painting, but you should also try adding a little vanilla to your paint when painting exteriors with alkyd coatings. It saves the painter a lot of headaches…literally. But whether inside or out, these simple ideas combined with a little old-fashioned common sense should produce a fresh new look with clean, breathable air he can live with.
Happy painting!
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