History of Paint

Domingue Architectural Finishes are all-natural products that stray little from the original early formulations for plaster and paint. For testament to the beauty and durability of such products one need look no further than the Pont du Gard aqueduct built with lime mortar by the Romans in the 1st century A.D. or to Renaissance Palladian villas plastered with lime and embellished with frescoes or to 19th century buildings in Switzerland and Germany painted with mineral paint that is as vibrant today as when it was applied.

The staying power of these examples speaks for itself but the why of it is worth understanding. If the 20th century was about scientific discoveries trumping time-honored ways, with the synthetic replacing the natural, the 21st is about rediscovering the materials and methods of old. What we now call natural foods used to be known simply as food, before chemicals and technology intervened. For millennia, paint was similarly straightforward, a simple mixture of three things—a binder, pigments, and a solvent (often water)—all of them natural ingredients. As recently as the first half of the 20th century, no homeowner painted his own house; he or she hired a painter who was skilled at mixing the ingredients to arrive at the right color and viscosity. In other words, all paint was custom.

The 1950s saw the introduction of the first synthetic petrochemical paint which, during the postwar building boom, swept the old ways aside and took hold of the market so firmly that, especially in the United States, it has never lost its grip. The development of synthetic paints and pigments put painting in the hands of the do-it-yourselfer for the first time. Our optimism and faith in science carried these products forward unchallenged for decades. Modern paint ingredients are designed to make painting a fast, easy endeavor by creating essentially a uniform plastic coating that applies easily, covers well and dries quickly. What such a coating cannot do is breathe. Painting a house in modern commercial paint is akin to dipping a body in wax; in both cases, the coating seals off air, causing suffocation.

With Domingue Architectural Finishes we are circling back to the origins of paint and embracing the profoundly beneficial characteristics of the natural ingredients that are the sole ingredients of our products.