How to Keep Oil Paint Solvent Odors to a Minimum while Painting

While I am a solvent free artist, it is not everyone's jam. Here are some tips for keeping your solvent odors and harmful vapors to a minimum in your painting space.

1. Fresh air, ventilation, and circulation are key to keeping vapors minimized. Keep doors open or even better a window.

2. Do not sleep in your studio.

3. When not in use, make sure all of your solvent's lids are tightly closed.

4. Do not use solvents to clean your hands of paint.

5. Instead of keeping your solvents open during a painting session, use a dropper to place a few drops onto your palette and then close the container. Using less is better, even if it means pausing to get more solvent as your painting session continues. If you put too much solvent on your palette it will just evaporate into the room.

6. Get an HEPA air filter.

7. Introduce house plants, such as peace lilies and snake plants into your painting area. Below is list of additional plants that you can add to your space that will help make your studio both more cheerful and your air cleaner (note: a lot of these plants are toxic to cats and dogs, be careful with the placement of your plants):

   
   

   

   
   

How about you? What do you do in order to keep your space safe while painting? For more about painting, check out my main Tips and Techniques page.

If you have any questions for me, feel free to reach out at katherine@katherinegriffinstudio.com and/or subscribe to my newsletter, using the link below, to stay up to date on my blog posts:

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I hope that you have a great day! See you in the next post.

This post is a rewrite from my original blog post, How to Keep Solvent Odor to a Minimum while Painting,