Juan Botero
Juan Botero and his Halloween front door
The door to Juan Botero's apartment in Houston, Texas, is made of wood – with a sleek, walnut-like finish.
But, for Halloween, he has an eye-catching change planned. “I'm going to paint my door orange,” Mr Botero, founder and chief executive of Colombia-based Glasst, told the BBC last month. And he kept his promise.
However, this decision is not as radical as it seems. Mr. Botero's company, an “innovation company,” designed the paint to be removable: once dry, you can peel it off like plastic wrap. If it works as expected, it should leave no marks or residue.
Mr. Botero came up with the idea for the product, called Unpaint, about five years ago, and initially his investors weren't enthusiastic. “They said I was crazy,” he recalls. Nonetheless, he insisted: “People are looking for personalization in their lives. »
Glasst is just one of many companies that claim house paint can do more than just look good. Various products currently on the market, their manufacturers promise, will save you money, keep you comfortable during heat waves, or transform your relationship with the walls of your home. But is it too good to be true?
Unpaint is due to launch in the US in November and Mr Botero is confident there is a market for the product. He says it will appeal to people living in rented accommodation, who cannot make permanent changes to their decor.
Unsurprisingly, Glasst declines to share details about how he makes the paint, but Mr. Botero says it is a resin from a renewable source. I ask him if he is talking about trees and he confirms.
Peelable paint already exists for car bodies, but getting such a product to work reliably on softer interiors is more difficult.
There is a risk of damaging your existing underlying paint when you eventually remove Unpaint from your walls, but if the permanent paint underneath is in good condition, this shouldn't happen, Botero says.
Its texture is strange: “A little rubbery,” explains Mr. Botero. In addition, it is easier to scrape off than a water-based emulsion.
Marketing the product was not easy. Glasst posted a video about the painting on YouTube two years ago, but the launch was delayed until this year “to align with the funding and resources needed,” Mr. Botero says.
Glazed
Peelable wallpaper is just an innovation in home paints
He mentions that Glasst is working on other coatings with unusual properties, including “Thermglasst,” an insulating resin expected to be launched next year. Mr Botero says less than a millimeter of this covering will have the same insulating effect as 40 millimeters of foam.
There is no independent validation of this claim yet, but there are already a range of insulating paints on the market that promise to reduce your heating bills and, it is fair to note, they have not always performed well. good results in scientific evaluations.
In 2019, Richard Fitton of the University of Salford and colleagues published a paper in which they studied the effectiveness of six thermal paints available on the UK market at the time. In short, they found that claims that such paints could reduce heating bills by as much as 20 or 25 percent were impossible to validate.
First, the researchers coated the panels with paints, which allowed them to measure the thermal resistance or insulating values of the coatings. Next, the team calculated the reduction in heating costs that could be expected after applying each of these paints to the interior of a typical Victorian terraced house.
The largest measured saving was just 2.9% and, given the price of the paintings in question, homeowners would potentially have to wait centuries or even a millennium – at 2019 prices – before recouping the cost of decorating in terms of reduced heating costs.
“If someone brought me a painting that could save me 25% on my energy bill, it would be on my wall by the weekend,” says Professor Fitton. He adds that he is currently working on a follow-up paper to the 2019 study and would also be open to testing Thermglasst, or any other insulating paint, in the future.
Getty Images
The reflective body of the Sahara silver ant inspired reflective paintings
Paints that help keep your home fresh might be more effective. For years, researchers have pursued the idea of improving the reflectivity of paint on exterior walls or roofs because it could help keep buildings cool on hot, sunny days. Such weather phenomena are becoming more and more frequent due to climate change.
The principle is as old as the hills – think of the white-painted houses of the Mediterranean. But paints designed to be significantly more reflective than standard white paint could accentuate this effect. i2Cool in Hong Kong is one of several companies currently marketing such a product.
In their case, the paint contains tiny nanoparticles inspired by the highly reflective body of the Sahara silver ant, which naturally has to deal with the scorching sun.
i2Cool
Start-up Martin Zhu has developed a highly reflective paint for roofs
Martin Zhu, chief executive and co-founder, says the paint made by i2Cool was tested on the roof of a shopping center in Hong Kong – but only on one of its two buildings, to see if there had a notable effect in terms of reducing the operating costs of the air conditioning (AC) of this building.
“We used a power meter to measure the energy consumption of the air conditioning system,” says Dr. Zhu. The cost of running air conditioning actually fell by 40% in the painted building, he adds.
Dr. Zhu began working on the painting while he was a doctoral student, and he mentions that the first versions made around 2017 contained silver, making it very expensive – over $100,000 just to cover a small area. Years of development later, it now costs around $10 per square meter of roofing. It also now comes in a variety of light colors, including gray, yellow, and green.
The researchers noted that highly reflective coatings for passive cooling applications must be resistant to dirt, for example, to prevent their effectiveness from diminishing over time. And the glare from ultra-reflective roofs risks warming darker structures nearby, a 2020 article suggested.
i2Cool's paint does not contain heavy metals and uses a water-based emulsion. Although it is not biodegradable, it can be recycled, says Dr. Zhu.
The company's latest major project is the Dubai Mall. The roof of this vast complex – the largest shopping center in the world in terms of total area – will eventually be completely covered in paint. A section of 1,000 m² has been completed to date.
Although it's not yet available in Europe, that could change, says Dr. Zhu. “We are talking to some distributors in the UK,” he says.
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