Why Ventilation Is Crucial When Painting Indoors

Summer is in full swing and perhaps one of your summer home improvement projects is to repaint your home’s interior to give it a fresh and updated look. However before any work begins, regardless of whether you’re hiring a professional or planning to do it yourself, it’s crucial to understand the importance of proper ventilation.

Without proper ventilation, the toxic fumes from the paint can affect your health making it difficult to breathe. Other side effects include dizziness and nausea. However, as long as the proper precautions are taken, these problems can be avoided. As painting professionals we make sure that our staff properly ventilates the room they’re working on not only to ensure that they themselves are safe from toxic fumes, but also to keep your home free of the fumes as well.

Before any interior painting begins, windows should be opened as wide as possible inside of the room that’s being painted. To increase ventilation one or more fans should be running and it’s important that these fans are pushing the fumes out of the window, not just circulating them. To make sure the fumes are escaping, a box window fan should be used. As long as plenty of air is flowing, the paint job can be completed without any problems. Another way to avoid toxic fumes from painting is to use a low-VOC or no-VOC paint. These types of paints do not release such harsh chemicals and are safer to use in your home.

Once the interior paint job has been finished the fans should be kept running while the paint dries to make sure that all fumes are eliminated from the room. Additionally, the room will need to dry for anywhere between 24-48 hours before you can start to move your belongings, such as furniture, back into it. If you move the furniture back into the room too soon, it is possible to smudge the paint and to get some of it on your furniture, which would not be good.

If you have a room in your home that could use a fresh coat of paint, give us a call at Tom Saint Painting and Remodeling. We can provide not only a professional paint job, but a paint job that is properly ventilated for the health of our painters and you and your family. Call us or click here for a quote!