What To Do About Paint Smell?

Have you heard of Sherwin Williams Harmony® Interior Latex No VOC paint? If you haven’t heard of it, and the smell of paint irritates you, annoys you, gives you a head ache, or even makes you sick I am here to tell you STLBeds has found a solution to your problems that we would like to pass along to our readers.

Recently STLBeds in an effort enhance the look of the store decided to spruce the showroom up with a fresh coat of paint. As you may or may not know the terrible smell of a freshly painted room can expose you to harmful VOC’s Volatile Organic Compounds. For some people the VOCs common in paint smell may be nothing more than a mere annoyance, while others can have severe reactions. Make no bones about it the emissions are not good for anyone. Having sold organic mattresses now for over 2 years we have been awakened to the fact of both minor and severe reactions due to things like chemical sensitivity. We have also learned problems can be as simple as a minor cough or irritation to an all out full blown hospital visit due to severe reactions and repertory issues.

With this in mind if you have been following our previous blogs to keep you informed on our efforts to green up our business STLBeds, we mentioned several things we are doing and are looking to do to make STLBeds more earth friendly. One project we did not mention was how to paint the walls without the obnoxious smell that comes along with painting and takes weeks and even months to fully dissipate. The idea was to not only limit exposure to our shoppers, but the mattresses they would test rest and purchase.

With the average house being well under 2000 square foot I am sure you can only imagine what a 3000 square foot mattress showroom would smell like after umpteen gallons of paint. The truth is the painting project was stretched out over a 2 week period of time because our painter Zack was only working for us on a part time basis. During this period we have had hundreds of visitors through our store through out the painting process. The amazing thing is that not one person commented on the smell. The truth was when we asked them if the store had an odor of paint, nearly everyone didn’t even realize that Zack was painting even though he was often with in just a few feet of them.

The paint we used for our painting project was from Sherwin Williams and is called Harmony® Interior Latex No VOC paint. The Harmony® Interior Latex was a natural choice for us and went along with our efforts to protect the environment. Sherwin Williams claim is that their Harmony Paint is very low-odor which we are happy to vouch for. They say it will allow you to immediately move into your newly painted area. Well as I mentioned we were working in our showroom through out the entire painting process and the smell or should I say the lack of smell did not disrupt our business in any way. Sherwin Williams claims their paint contains less solvents and zero-VOC’s (volatile organic compounds), which is what we really like about it. They also say because of that what is emitted into the air, what we breathe is safer than ever before and is truly more environmentally friendly. Thanks Arnold Sherwin Williams for the help. I hope this blog helps you sell more earth friendly Harmony paint. If any of your customers are looking for an Organic mattress, hope you’ll send them to STLBeds. Thanks SW.