Painting a room is the prime asset when it comes to interior design providing a fresh look to your new space, but then there’s the downside of figuring out how to reduce paint smell in the house after you’ve finished your masterpiece.
The issue with painting a room is that the smell of the paint, particularly oil-based ones, can linger in the room for days. It’s always advised that when you paint you should have plenty of ventilation to prevent the paint fumes from building up, but sometimes it’s simply not enough. Thankfully, here some tips on how to reduce paint smell that lingers in the house, using items you can find directly in your home.
How To Reduce Paint Smell With Onions
The smell of onions aren’t exactly great, but they can be used alternatively to absorb smells too. Due to their absorbing abilities, they can be handy for reducing the smell of paint in your house whilst you’re painting. All you need to do is cut the onions through the centre and place it in a shallow bowl. Depending on the size of your room, you may need at least a couple and simply place them at either side of the room with the cut side facing upwards.
They’ll be able to absorb the smell for several hours and once you finish painting, throw them in the bin.
Try Using Baking Soda
Baking soda is a common ingredient that is used to reduce the smell of odours and doing the same with paint smells is no different. There are several ways that you can use to help tackle the lingering smell of paint fumes:
– Fill shallow bowls with baking soda and place them around the room. If they’re left overnight they’ll be able to absorb the smells for you. Then, dispose of the baking soda in the morning.
– If you have carpet, sprinkle the baking soda over the carpet and let it settle and absorb the smell overnight. Hoover it up in the morning.
– Dissolve baking soda in water and place the bowls around the room. It should take around 24 hours for the baking soda to absorb the odours and then you can discard them.
Candles
For another way on how to reduce paint smells in the house, candles are a great way to achieve this. They help to eliminate smells from your house from the essence they give off when they burn. There is also odour eliminating candles that you can purchase. Simply light the candles and place them on either side of the room, allowing them to burn for several hours. In doing so, the odours from the paint will be absorbed and it will leave your room smelling fresh and clean.
Water
Water is also a simple method to reduce paint smells in the room. You can simply use it alone or benefit from using other odour absorbing based ingredients and liquids to rid the smell. Here are a few ways you can use water to reduce odours in your house:
– Place a bucket of water in the room overnight
– Add lemon slices to the water in a bowl and leave them in the room overnight to absorb the odour
– Add white vinegar to the water (or on its own) to neutralise the odours in the room.
These are a few methods to help rid of smells in your house after painting, but always be sure to open windows and have plenty of ventilation in the room.
Airmatic specialise in odour extraction for factories and large industrial commercial spaces. For more information, visit our odour extraction page or contact us.