A brief history of paint
Q: Can you settle a bet? How long ago was house paint invented? My friend says it wasn’t created until the mid-1800s. I’m fairly certain people were painting their houses long before then, but he won’t budge. Do you have an answer for us? — Martin J., Columbia, Md.
A: Your friend may be thinking of the date that pre-mixed paints became widely available commercially. This happened in 1880, when after several years of experimentation, the Sherwin-Williams Company developed a formula that suspended finely ground paint particles in linseed oil.
Why was this important? Before this suspension (initially called “oil-bound distemper,” rather than paint) was created, prepping the paint for houses, furniture, art — you name it — was a time-consuming and often expensive process. A limited range of colors was available, created from certain minerals, glass and natural dyes, and getting each color to adhere to a surface was often an art in itself. The introduction of stable, pre-mixed paint colors allowed both professionals and do-it-yourselfers to paint houses quickly and affordably.
You’re also right in thinking that house painting has existed much longer than 1880. Excluding cave paintings made tens of thousands of years ago, civilizations in ancient Egypt and China were known to decorate walls with colors made from iron oxides (umbers, ochres and black) and soil pigments (yellow, orange and red).
The Egyptians created the first known synthetic pigment — blue — 5,000 years ago by grinding down blue glass. The Romans created purple dye by crushing mollusk shells (4 million shells created just one pound of dye, meaning the color was rare and expensive). The Aztecs prized the red color extracted from the cochineal beetle far above gold. White lead (lead carbonate) occurred naturally, but demand for it was so great that manmade versions were being produced at least as early as the 2nd century A.D.
Until 1880, creating paint for various uses was a painstaking art. The pigments had to be mixed with a binder to keep them from separating and streaking, and then thinned out so they could be easily applied. Painters had to know the properties of each color, as well as the properties of the surface to which they would be applied. For example, the color India Yellow — created by mixing cow’s urine with mud and extracting the resulting pigment — had to be covered with a varnish after painting to keep it from fading.
These mixed pigments weren’t the only way to protect and beautify a home. Farmhouse kitchens and barn interiors in the U.S. were typically coated with a mixture of calcium hydroxide and chalk, commonly called whitewash. While not as durable as paint, whitewash helped protect the walls from weather. The calcium hydroxide also killed bacteria lingering on the walls, an added health benefit.
Hope this settles the bet!