When you are talking about painting, most people think one of the two things. There’s a painting about an artist with a canvas. And the other is all about a home or structural painting. Another common question is – what’s the difference when it comes to the paint being used. This article is bought to you by Mcintosh Painters, an experience house painter and self proclaimed artist.
Can You Use A House Paint For Artist Painting?
While there’s no one stopping you from using house paint to express your artistic creativity, you should not do such. This is due to the fact that house paint scores poor at appearance, lightfastness, and durability compared to a paint made for artists. This article is also not saying that house paints and such are inferior. Rather, such kind of paint is made with a different purpose, and it does not satisfy the requirements of an artist.
The pigments of an artists’ paint are standardly tested for lightfastness, which ranges from average to excellent. Lightfastness is the paint’s ability to resist fading. Since a big part of artistic painting is manipulating colors to get the desired effect, you don’t want the colors to change over time.
The pigments that are used in house paint usually come with plenty of white. Also, the tints used are typically based on synthetic-organic colors. This means that the tints are produced artificially. As a result, color quality does not stay very long. Since houses are painted at least once in a decade, this isn’t a big problem. On the other hand, you want the colors in your painting to stay forever.
Another major problem with house paints is the binder. You may have heard the term acrylic latex and latex when choosing house paints, indicating the polymer base. However, the term is very broad. In fact, most manufacturers won’t disclose the exact polymer base they are using. Why is this important? Well, it all brings you back to the issue of how the color changes over time.
As an example, using styrene as a polymer base tends to become yellowish as time moves forward. Other polymer bases also behave differently. The reason why this happens is that house paints are made with economic reasons in mind. On the other hand, professional-grade artistic paints are made with a 100% acrylic polymer base, which allows for top-notch longevity. However, if you try to make a house paint with a 100% acrylic polymer base, the cost will skyrocket as there’s a lot of areas you need to cover.
House paints will also have high levels of bulk materials. Again, these kinds of additives are designed to make the paint artificially thicker so you can paint over a larger area. However, it makes the paint significantly less flexible. This isn’t an issue with solid surfaces like the walls of your house. However, if you use it on a canvas, there’s a good possibility the paint will crack.
Bottom Line
As mentioned above, no one will stop you if you are going to use house paint for your art painting project. However, you will need to understand that house paints are geared towards more coverage. Also, the colors don’t need to be very fade-resistant as it’s highly recommended to repaint the house once every ten years. Artistic paints are made for quality and longevity. In other words, with artistic paints, you want the paint to last forever with little color changes as much as possible.
