Winter may bring in the cold, but that doesn’t mean you have to put your indoor painting projects on hold. Painting in the winter can be safe and productive, if prepared for properly. Most paints contain some amount of water. Keeping this in mind, it’s important to properly store your paints for your winter painting projects so they don’t freeze. (Water freezes at 32°F.) When you’re ready to put these tips to good use, you won’t open a can of ruined, frozen paint.
Pollution Reducing
One of the best parts about Activa Coating is that our paint is photocatalytic. That means that when light hits its surface, even when it’s wet, it destroys microbes that cause pollution. This makes Activa safer than other paints while painting indoors, because it’s natural smart-technology properties destroy fumes on contact. This comes in handy when painting indoors in the winter, since you won’t have to open any windows. If you’re still concerned, use a disposable respirator.
Ventilation
Even though you won’t have to open any windows and let the cold air in, that doesn’t mean you can forget about ventilation. In any painting project, it’s important to keep air moving through the room to help the paint dry properly. In the winter, you can bring in a fan or turn on the ceiling fan to ensure air is moving continuously through the room and not remaining stagnant.
Temperature
One of the trickiest things about paint is ensuring that you paint at the correct temperature. Paint goes on best between 70 – 80°F, however ideally above 60°F is acceptable. You should never paint when it is below 54°F with Activa Coating. Make sure that during your painting project, and for the next 3 – 5 days, that you keep the walls at a temperature above 54°F.
Walls can often be deceiving in their temperature as they are more directly impacted by the outside. If your home has low or insufficient insulation, your walls could become cold, fast, even if the temperature is high in the home. When starting a painting project, make sure to feel your walls. You can even bring in a space heater to keep the walls at an even, warm temperature.
What happens to paint if it is applied in a cold setting?
If your paint doesn’t freeze first, there can be some consequences to painting when it is too cold for the paint. First, the paint won’t dry properly. Not only will it take longer to dry, but cold weather can cause: poor color uniformity, water spotting in latex paint, inconsistent drying times, and film cracking. The reason paint doesn’t do well in the cold is because it interferes with the paint’s ability to dry, coalesce, and bond. As you may have learned in science class, colder weather makes particles move at a slower rate. Due to this, the polymer particles can’t move fast enough to make enough energy to bond and dry.
Conclusion
Painting doesn’t have to end just because the cold weather comes in. You could lose a lot of time, depending on where you live, waiting for warm weather to return to continue painting. There may be times when the conditions aren’t right, so you will have to be patient. However, waiting for the perfect opportunity to begin your winter painting project is easy. Just make sure to follow these steps, use Activa Coating to keep you safe and healthy, and confirm that the temperature won’t drop below 54°F for 3 – 5 days. Happy Winter Painting!
