How To Choose Interior Wall Paint

Hi, I'm Adrienne Chinn. I'm an interior designer based in London, England. Today, I'm going to talk to you about an aspect of interior design.

Today, we're going to look at paints. There are so many types of paint on the market now. It can be confusing knowing what type of paint to use where so we're going to have a quick look at the type of paints that are available and where I would suggest you might consider using that particular type of paint.

So if we look here, there are so many manufacturers out there. They are all doing different types of paints. Some like to go with more muted tones here, we've got this, this is from Little Greene company.

Farrow & Ball do these more muted tones. So as far as colours, there are companies that concentrate more on the more subtle muted tones and then you do have trade companies that do more traditional blues, greens, reds, yellows and all the different values of the colour as you can see here, there are different values of a colour, different values of that green tone. So, we've got those kinds of things.

Now, the thing is when you're doing interiors, mostly you will be putting a matte emulsion or a silk emulsion on the walls. Now, a powdery matte emulsion is something which has a very nice quality to it and if it's going to be a room which is used primarily by adults, I would say this is something that I would suggest and I often use matte emulsion. But the thing with matte emulsion, it is quite chalky and it doesn't wipe very well.

So if you need a paint where you need it to have wipeability, I would choose a vinyl matte emulsion or a silk matte emulsion. A lot of manufacturers will, on their paint cards, this is from Crown Paints, they have a very clear demarcation here of the different paints that they supply and they have here vinyl matte which still gives kind of that powdery quality but it's wipeable so it's useful in children's rooms. You don't want it too sheen to the wall, you want it to have a matte finish, but it's wipeable.

Alternatively, they have something here which is a vinyl silk emulsion and emulsion paints are water-based paints, they're not oil-based paints. This would be used, again, in a room like a bathroom or a kitchen or children's room where you want easy wipeability but this will have a bit of a sheen to it. So, that's the difference between the vinyl matte and the vinyl silk emulsion and emulsions are the paints that you put on walls.

Then if you're looking at the woodwork, the trim in your room, you generally have a choice of two for that and that is eggshell or that is gloss. Eggshell is a very soft sheen type of wipeable finish that is lovely on a woodwork. I use it all the time.

Traditionally in Victorian times and earlier in the 20th century, people use a lot of gloss paint. Gloss is great as well for public areas if people are doing hotels and things like that. You'll often see gloss paint since it's very easily wipeable.

It's also something you can consider in children's rooms because they want something very wipeable but it has a very high sheen to it which, in contemporary design, people have kind of gotten away from. But it's something that you can consider. A little bit of an unusual way to use gloss paint if you do actually put it on a wall, it gives a lacquer type effect so it's a little bit of different way to use gloss where you wouldn't normally put it on a wall.

But if you want a lacquer effect, you can use gloss there. Gloss traditionally was made of oil which had a high scent issue to it when it was applied but this issue is being overcome by the fact that these paints now have to be made water-based so they have less of a smell issue and they're much more environmentally friendly. These are really the main paints that I would recommend if you're going inside, you're doing interiors, are the emulsions, the vinyl, the silk or the standard matte emulsions as I discussed, or for woodwork, I would go for the eggshell or glo