Question from Tanya
My husband painted the baseboards in our bedroom with Olympic Premium paint, which is no VOC, almost 3 weeks ago. The paint did not have much of a smell in the can but a couple of days later the smell became very strong. I have not been feeling well since then. About 10 days ago he took all of the baseboards off the wall and out of the house. He had touched up a little of the other wood trim in the room and so he sanded it to where he thought he had all of the new paint off. The room still smells horrible and I can’t go in there for long. We have tried running a space heater, leaving the windows open during the day for several days and even using cut up raw onion to try to absorb the odor. It seems that the paint has infiltrated other areas of our house as well. There is a slight odor in the rest of the house and I do not feel too well anywhere in the house. Does anyone have any other ideas?
Debra’s Answer
Keep running your space heater, as heat is the only thing that will release the odor. Keep all the doors and windows closed so it gets as warm as possible. Do this for at least eight hours, then air the room out. If the odor persists, heat the room again.
Benjamin Moore paint is amazing and low VOC. In the past, we used other paints from Home Depot, etc., they always seem to have a smell. But not Benjamin Moore paint – it is a very light/low smell.
That’s been my experience too.
I haven’t been able to paint for over 20 years, After trying Ben. Moore Natura I am back painting again. I still am careful and wear a mask and run a filter while painting just to be on the safe side.
Did this thread used to have a lot more comments? I could have sworn that I myself commented here, but perhaps I’ve confused this page with another.
I used Olympic ICON zero-VOC (not VOC after adding color), which is now named “Assure”, and the room we painted developed a bad smell, like BO. It was worst when the weather was hot and humid.
We were unable to fix the smell by priming over it, and we ended up removing the drywall (which had nothing wrong with it).
This is a potential problem with low-VOC paints. People should start saving their paint cans as well as a sample of the paint until they’re sure there’s nothing wrong with it. The smell started a couple days after we were done painting. The paint companies are denying this problem, and saying there’s no way to investigate without the liquid paint. However, air samples can be taken.
Don’t give all of your sample back to the paint company, because they won’t necessarily test it for what’s actually causing the problem, which can be a complicated chemistry.
Happy painting!
We just painted our garage with the anti-mold exterior ultra-white Olympic paint. Now we have a strong pungent odor that is getting worse by the day. It doesn’t even smell like paint. I could deal with pain smell. This smells like sour body odor.
The worst part is that we aren’t done painting because we were waiting for Lowes to get some more in. I guess we’ll keep it sealed during the day and let it get as warm as possible and then air it out at night when it’s cool. I wish I had known it was going to do this before we started. I would’ve use a different paint.
Anyone that hasnhad problems with the paint, did you use white or did you have it tinted? I painted a wooden entertainment center and I could smell it that day and just a little a couple days later, but nothing since. A can of it actually spilled on my floor and I never smelled it. Even while cleaning up. (I wonder if since the can wasn’t completely sealed, if the little bit of scent it initially had offgassed?? Is that even possible?) I actually didn’t use white but a base 3 untinted (on accident). Was going to paint the walls, but now I’m scared! I am also wondering if those that had issues painted drywall or wallboard (like what is in a manufactured home). My walls give off a sweet smell when it is humid, which I believe is from formaldehyde.That is the reason we are wanting to paint/seal.
Thoughts, suggestions?
We have had a similar / horrible experience with Olympic One Paint. Lowes also recommended this paint for our nursery. The room was painted months ago and it still has a strong chemical smell. I definitley believe it is the paint as we’ve been painting for years and have nevel experienced this before.
DO NOT BY OLYMPIC ONE PAINT!
We are going through this right now. We just bought a home and started painting the rooms. The bedroom (my daughters room) smelled 2 days after painting. The smell got stronger when the window was open. % days later it smelled like something had died in there. We had the house checked and there where no signs of that. SO Olympic sent out a rep. The Rep took a paint sample and he noticed the bathroom had a strange sweet smell to it. The samples all came back fine. They told us to use BIN to seal the walls. We did that and repainted. Afew days later the smell came back. Now our homeowners Insurance is coming to investigate. The room takes your breath away!!! We have to move in there in weeks!
I researched this and in the U.K they had this same problem with CROWN paint. They call it Paint Odour Phenomenon or Ghost Odour. If you look this up, it is exactly what everyone on here is describing. Smell gets worse in warm humid weather,open windows make it worse, smells on and off ext. Olympic wanted me to sign a paper saying that I wouldn’t sue or take any further action if they paid me back for all the paint. I told them I wasn’t signing anything until I had it checked out.
Try putting a few big cans of opened cheap ground coffee in the room up high where no animals or kids can get into it. We got skunk out of our car by putting a can of coffee in it for a month and keeping it sealed up in the summer heat. I brought the coffee that was in our car into the house that absorbed the skunk odor and didn’t smell a thing in the car or from the coffee used to absorb it. We have also used the coffee for caulking smell in our bathrooom for a week for a low odor caulking and it removed that smell too. You could also try bags of zeolite but from experience it works slower than the coffee but you can re-charge them every 6 months. The coffee you’ll have to throw out or put in your compost bin and replace with new eventually once the coffee smell is gone. It’s definietly worth a try. Good luck. Let us know if it works for you.
Sincerely,
Colleen
I am having the same problem. We painted our 12 month old daughters room on Monday. I went to Lowes and told them I was painting a nursery. The guy there recommend the Olympic One paint + primer. The first two days it did not smell bad. By the third night, I let my daughter sleep in there. When I went to get her up the next morning, I almost threw up the smell was so strong. She was cranky all day and threw up twice that evening. Of course I have not let her back in the room since that morning. The smell has still not gone away. It is the worst smell. I called Lowes today and talked to a lady that was working in paint. She said the guy should have never recommended that paint for a nursery. I am so upset and I do not know what to do. The window has been open since Wednesday and we have fans going. I can smell it just walking by the room (the door is shut). I am thinking about going to Lowes tomorrow and demanding they do something. This is not normal. I have talked with several painters who all say there should not be a smell that strong 6 days later. Help!
COMMENT FROM DEBRA:
The paint should not smell like this. Paint smells should decrease with time, not increase with time, which leads me to believe, once again, that the problem in this case may be it is reacting with some old paint or something on the wall. I would go talk to a manager at Lowe’s. They should give you your money back for this.
How to solve the problem? It’s difficult to determine that from a distance, sight unseen. You could apply heat, you could apply a sealer, you could remove the sheetrock and start over. Those are the choices.
I got the worst headache and nausea today painting. This happened 2 weeks ago and I remembered that it was also on a day that I painted. When I checked, I used the same paint as last time, too. It was Olympic paint, tinted to a custom color. I used the exterior last time but today is was interior. I mix my paint with Floetrol, a paint conditioner but after reading this blog/comments, I think it’s the paint itself. Last time I threw up but this time I almost did but I prayed and I managed to not do so. I am a faux painter and do this for a living. Thank God the paint was used to paint outdoors so my customers didn’t have any problems. What can be done. Can this be reported to the government? What would they do, though, huh?
COMMENT FROM DEBRA:
In any situation where there is a health effect from an exposure there are two aspects at play: the toxicity of the exposure and the tolerance of the person being exposed. If you had this kind of reaction to this paint (which has very low toxicity), and you are painting frequently for a living, I would say that your body is overwhelmed with toxic chemicals and you immediately need to start doing something to reduce the toxic load in your body. You didn’t say the paint still smells after months. That would be a problem with the paint. You said you had symptoms while using the paint. Please see http://www.toxicfreenutrition.com for information on how to remove toxic chemicals from your body.