By Pocyline Karani
What feelings are evoked when you enter a room painted in stinging charcoal black? Most likely fear, horror, chilling or evil.
People and communities associate different colours with various mythical beliefs. And this explains why, for a long time, our walls were either in off white or sky blue. From office walls and theatres to our living rooms, the very confident tried on white.
However, the daring ones who have no guts to go all black have found solace in experimenting with darker versions of the colours we have for so long never dared to use. Deep red, deep maroon and pure yellow are some of the most difficult paints to get proper outcome with.
Achieving a deep dark of a given colour does not mean applying five coats of the paint. Most often than not, many end up getting shiny spots in the quest of achieving proper coverage.
READ MORE
Moses Kajwang: Governors must be held to account
River's secrets: Desire at edge of death's passing shadow
Kenya urged to pilot AI regulatory Sandbox in bid to lead Africa's digital future
Brawls and betrayal: How devolution has turned into street fight
Chemistry of dark paints
To achieve deep red and yellow, consider the pigment quantity in the paint. [photoS: MARTIN MUKANGU/ Standard/ COURTESY: EXHALE SPA] |
First, dark colours like red contain a great deal of pigment and this becomes the genesis of the problem. The purer the colour, the more difficult it will be for amateur painters to get a proper outcome.
Dark blues and greens are a bit easier to work with though they may present a problem if proper surface preparation is not done. This is because all dark colours contain 0.35 to 0.47 litres of pigment per four-litre can, compared to a few drops for a pastel.
According to paint experts, the pigments needed to create bright reds and bright yellows are transparent. To further complicate matters, red paint is made from a tint base that’s virtually clear instead of the usual white titanium-dioxide base.
The base is what helps paint to look opaque. Without that opaque base, red paints are virtually transparent. If you are definitely set on using red paint, or any darker paint you should be properly prepared to take a few extra steps to have better success.
The simplest solution is to choose a red that includes other pigments, such as black. These pigments add opacity and improve covering power.
Surface preparation will solve the problem of coverage that allows white to show even after applying four to five coats of paint. To prevent this, or at least help with this visually, you must apply at least two coats of a deep base tinted primer.
Bust sheen
When purchasing your paint colour, ask the store to mix up some primer with the same exact amount of tint into the gallon of primer. Apply this deep-based tinted primer first. This will eliminate the frustration of not getting proper coverage. You will still need about three to four coats of paint for proper coverage.
Now onto the second most common problem: shiny spots on dark painted walls. This is called burnishing. It is the increase in gloss or sheen of paint film when subjected to rubbing, scrubbing or having an object brush up against it.
This occurs when a flat paint is used in a high traffic area, where frequent washing and spot cleaning needs to be done, where objects such as furniture rub against the walls or when you use lower grades of paint with poor stain and scrub resistance.
The trouble is, pigments used in dark coloured paints never dry.
What happens is that you may rub up against the paint and you create a smoothing or thinning out of the pigments, which causes a shiny spot on your walls. Dark colours absorb light and semi-gloss ones reflect light so if you mix these two, you get the absorption of light and less luminous (reflection). Look at it like they cancel each other.
Because the paint base used for darker colours is clear, it also loses some of the luminescence once painted.
For instance, a semi-gloss will look more like satin once it is painted. To give your dark walls more durability, use a semi-gloss base when painting in a dark colour or a paint base with some scrubability.
Since companies have their own dark colour bases, ensure you talk to the paint stores and get them to show you the sheen level of a paint you are interested in.
If this is not possible, buy a litre (quart) only and try a sample board before doing the walls so you can get a feel of the sheen level and other qualities before applying it on your walls.
