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Milk Paint: It's a Thing and is Surprisingly Good for Your Home
The next time you are cleaning out your refrigerator after a long vacation away from home, you might want to think twice about throwing away an old gallon of milk that is going sour—because it might still be of use. Before the day and age of commercial paints, many homeowners would mix their own paint from leftover milk. Milk paint, also known as casein paint, has been used since at least the time of the ancient Egyptians and offers a durable, non-toxic paint option for homeowners that can spice up your walls, cabinetry, furniture, and other interior elements of your home with a matte, antique-looking finish.
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Is Milk Paint Environmentally Friendly?
Milk paint offers several benefits both for our health and for the natural environment. When combined with natural, earthen, or mineral pigment powders, such as those offered by Earth Pigments, milk paint will have absolutely zero VOCs. Whereas even the greenest commercial paints will contain additives and distillates that can cause several negative environmental effects, milk paint will cause absolutely no environmental harm. It can be much more safely disposed of as well.
Milk paint is naturally alkaline, meaning that it is a natural inhibitor of mold and mildew growing inside your home. Not only will milk paint help you avoid VOCs' health problems from paint, but it can also actively improve your indoor air quality by hampering mold growth.
Top Suppliers of Milk or Casein Paint
While you might have trouble finding milk or casein-based paint in the paint aisle at Home Depot or other large hardware stores, the growing interest in healthy home interiors had led to an explosion of artisanal paint companies that manufacture powdered milk paint products and market them online. Not only are these products more environmentally sustainable and healthier for you and your family, but opting for these paint options will support small retailers and entrepreneurs. Below, we look at a few of these smaller companies that offer powdered milk products online.
Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint
One quart of milk paint manufactured by Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint can cover approximately 70 square feet of the wall surface. Like other milk paint products, it is easy to use and only requires mixing the powder with water. Depending on the amount of water added to the pigmented powder, milk paint application can range from a solid color to a stain. It can also be used on any porous surface without primer, as the product is designed to soak into and absorb the substrate. Their wide range of colors of 100% naturally pigmented milk paint starts at $23 for a quart of paint, and you can find a list of online retailers that sell Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint here.
How do prices compare to conventional zero-VOC paints? With paints, pricing often depends more on the brand and can range from about $30 to $60 per gallon—so, at closer to $60 to $80 per gallon, milk paint can be pricier. But you can also stretch the paint further by adding more water, depending on the aesthetic you are going for. So if you are looking for more of an antique look and feel and want to experiment with healthier choices for your home, milk paint is worth checking out.
Tobias Roberts
Tobias runs an agroecology farm and a natural building collective in the mountains of El Salvador. He specializes in earthen construction methods and uses permaculture design methods to integrate structures into the sustainability of the landscape.
