The history of the painting trade: from whitewash and distemper to modern surface treatment

Treating a surface is one of the oldest tasks in construction. Ever since people began building with clay, stone and wood, there has been a need to protect the material from moisture, sun and wear — while also wanting to make the room more beautiful. The painting trade grew out of exactly that duality: to protect and to beautify. As a building painter you stand in a tradition many hundreds of years old, but with products and methods that are very much modern.

§Lime, limewash and early binders

In older times, most surface treatments were made from what was at hand. Whitewashing — where burnt and slaked lime is mixed with water and applied to a wall — was the common way to treat facades and interior walls. The lime penetrates the substrate, breathes and acts disinfecting, and it was used on everything from churches to farm buildings. Indoors, people often used size paint, where pigment is bound with a simple glue, typically extracted from animals.

The colors came from earth pigments and minerals — ochre gave yellow and red, soot gave black, and various soils gave the muted tones we today associate with old houses. The painter had to know their raw materials: how lime should be slaked, how pigment should be ground, and how much binder a color could tolerate before it cracked.

§Guild time: the trade is organized

In the Middle Ages and onwards, painters organised themselves in guilds like other crafts, and the painter trade eventually got its own place. The guild determined who could practise the trade, monitored quality and trained new journeymen through apprenticeships. The path went from apprentice through journeyman to master, and a journeyman could wander and work for different masters to learn new things. The painter was often both the one who painted walls and ceilings and the one who did more artistic work such as marbling, wood-graining and decorative painting.

In Denmark the guild monopoly was gradually abolished in the 1800s with free enterprise and it became free to practice a craft. But the tradition of apprenticeship journeyman exam and professional community lived on — and still does in the modern vocational education system where you alternate between school and practice.

§How the key players work together to solve a patient's problems

The old painter's everyday work required great material understanding because almost everything was mixed on site. There were no buckets of ready-made paint in a thousand shades — the painter tore pigment, mixed binder and adjusted colour and consistency by experience.

• 01Brushes of natural hair and bristles for various tasks
• 02Pigments and earth colours that were milled and mixed on site
• 03Lime, glue and later linseed oil as binders
• 04Spatula and scraper to make the surface even
• 05Experience as the most important 'measuring instrument' for colour and consistency.

Linseed oil paint became a cornerstone of the trade. Pigment mixed in boiled linseed oil gave a tough, durable paint that penetrated the wood and protected it. It dried slowly and had to be brushed thinly in several layers — patience was part of the craft. Many of the old windows and facades that still stand are protected by linseed oil paint.

§Industrialisation and new products

Industrialisation in the 19th and 20th centuries fundamentally changed the painter trade. Pigments and binders could now be manufactured and mixed in factories and the painter began to buy finished products instead of tearing everything himself. New synthetic pigments gave stronger and more uniform colours and the development of alkyd and later water-based paints provided products that dried faster and were easier to work with.

§The painter today

The modern house painter works with water-based paints for most interior tasks, because they emit fewer solvents and are better for both work environment and indoor air quality. Colours are mixed mechanically to colour codes, so the same shade can be matched again and again. You work with spatulating, sanding, priming and surface treatment of many different substrates — gypsum, concrete, wood, metal and felt.

But the core of the profession is the same as before. You must understand the substrate, choose the right treatment, prepare thoroughly and do the work so that it both protects and looks good. Pre-treatment — cleaning, repairing and priming — is still what determines whether the result lasts. A good painter is not only known for the last stroke, but for all the preparatory work that is not visible.