The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood
264. Improved Lighting-Effects.—Paints can be used to secure soft and soothing lighting-effects. The decorator varies the colors and general tone to suit conditions of location with respect to natural light and general color-schemes. Dark rooms can be made lighter by the use of paints of the lightest tints and of the lightest colors if possible. The artificial lighting-effects of halls and rooms, as well as the outside of buildings, can be varied and made attractive by the color-schemes employed. The artists who planned the lighting-effects of all of the recent World's Fairs considered the color-effects of the lights upon the walls and various parts of the buildings and also upon the green plants and shrubs, and the flowers that were placed near the walls, the walks, and the driveways.
COMPOSITION OF PAINTS
The principal- ingredients employed in compounding paints are known as pigments, vehicles, thinners, and driers. Paints are mechanical mixtures rather than chemical combinations or compounds.
265. Pigments—Pigments give obscuration to paints, and may be composed of materials which add color or roughness, and binding qualities as well as covering power. It is therefore proper to divide pigments into three great classes as follows: (1) white or body pigments, the function of which is to give opacity and body to the paint; (2) colored pigments, which are used largely for their color-giving properties, tho some have good hiding power, density, and permanency; and (3) extenders, which in some cases increase the durability of the paint, reduce its price, and add roughness which is advantageous especially in undercoats. The extenders are white pigments but are not body or covering pigments.
White pigments used in paints may be divided into two distinct classes: (1) pigments which remain in an opaque condition after being mixed with drying-oils, and (2) inert pigments that offer very little hiding power or obscuration as a body material in paints after being incorporated into mixtures containing drying-oils, but which add durability and remain chemically inactive. Inert pigments usually retain their opacity whenever water instead of a drying-oil, such as linseed-oil, is used as the vehicle. The principal white pigments which remain opaque in mixtures with drying-oils are white lead, including both the basic carbonate of lead and the sulphate of lead, zinc oxide, zinc lead, lithopone, titanium oxides, antimonious oxide, which is used as a substitute for white lead in France, and tin oxide which is sometimes employed in making opal glass.
