Nixing the Smell of Paint

I tend to use acrylic laytex paint whenever possible.  While this paint is not as low odour as the newer eco-friendly paints with no VOCs, it has a lot lower odour than oil based enamel paints.  I have extensive experience with the acrylic laytex paints, limited experiences with enamel paints and no experience with the eco-friendly paints.  My winter project is painting every room in the house and given my druthers I would have tried the eco-friendly paints except my local Home Hardware has had no feedback at all on these paints other than they are not selling well.  So I went with the tried and true Beautitone acrylic laytex paint.

Acrylic laytex paints are wonderful to work with and they are easy to clean-up but there is still a smell.  Unfortunately the odour can bother those like me with sinus and asthma, more so when the windows can't be opened to rid the house of the odour.  I use two techniques to help rid the house of acrylic latex paint odour:

• exhaust fans - An exhaust fan can be quite beneficial in removing odour from painting.  This can be quite effective at removing odour during the painting process.  The downside to using exhaust fans is they suck out the heat along with the odour.  
• a bowl of vinegar - A bowl of white vinegar neutralizes the paint odour.  Place a bowl with about an inch of white vinegar in the room while painting and leave it there a couple of days.  It really does help.

Garden Gnome
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