What’s the colour of the year?

ICI paints and AkzoNobel have come up with the upcoming trends for the coming year, through their international research they have come up with a range of colours they think will be in trend throughout 2012.

The colour of the year 2012 is……. 10YR 21/436 (also known as Firecracker 4).

“The Colour of the year is a blushing, lively, juicy red

Red is held in high regard around the world for its many symbolic purposes.

The colour red offers many possibilities: contrasting one colour, bringing out a certain depth or cool quality in the next, allowing a third to recede. Like the jester in a deck of cards, it can change the game in an instant and brighten your outlook in unpredictable ways.”

Quote from Dulux Trade website

You can see more of this years colour schemes here:
Dulux Trade website or here:
http://www.colourfutures.com and download the Colour Futures book.

If you would like to work out how much of the colour of the year (10YR 21/436) or any other colour you need to buy, use our FREE Paint Calculator.

Connect with us in the social media world

There is now another way you can spread the word about our website and blog, we have recently added Google+ to both our website and the posts within our blog. You can +1 each post, this will show in your +1 section within your Google+ profile so you can publicly recommend that post.

We have a google+ account and you can join our circles. We have also included an easy way to ‘Add to circles’ by a widget on the left side border on the website and the right side border on the blog.

You can also find all our other social media links on the ‘About this blog‘ page, we have added the Google+, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin so its easy for you to connect with us.

So, if your interested in decorating, DIY and industry news please ‘Add to circle‘ on Google+, ‘Like‘ us on Facebook, ‘Tweet‘ us on Twitter, and ‘Connect‘ with us on Linkedin.

VOC in 2011

Many of you may of heard about VOC’s but are unaware what they are and what it all means.

VOC stands for Volatile Organic Compound, what that you may ask, VOC’s are solvents within solvent-based paints such as gloss, undercoat and varnishes. These solvents evaporate into the atmosphere as the paint dries. You can tell how high the VOC’s are in a tin of paint normally by the distinctive smell you get off from them, gloss has a high VOC content where as emulsion has a low VOC content.
If you look at the side of the paint tin it will have a symbol and also some writing about the VOC content in the tin.
VOC’s contribute to environmental air pollution and in turn damage the ozone layer.

In the past year there has been a lot of news in the press about paint being ‘VOC Compliant’. From the 1st of January 2011 the sale of non-compliant products will be forbidden.

So can I still buy and use non-compliant paint

As from January 2011 you are unable to buy non-compliant paints, as it is now illegal to sell them. If you have older paint, say in the garage or shed, you are still allowed to use them. It maybe worth thinking about if you will need more paint than what you already have as the new VOC compliant paint may differ slightly to the older paints you have.

Search online for more information about VOC’s and the current law.

Useful links

Some related links:

• Dulux
• Crown Paints
• ICI Paints
• Wikipedia – Volatile_organic_compound
• British Coatings Federation