Vegan Paint Brushes

Posted By admin  On 01.05.21



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I’m smack dab in the middle of a 2-month kitchen remodel. It was exciting for the first couple of weeks, but now I’m soooo over it. I just want my life back. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been enjoying all the takeout and the challenge of preparing meals using only an air fryer and a single burner, but I haven’t been enjoying the dirty house, the spray paint in the grass, and don’t get me started on multiple gross men using the bathroom….ewwwwww. If you found this post because you’re thinking about starting a kitchen renovation, then you might want to check out my post about what I’ve been eating during this process.

Besides planning what to eat during my remodel, I also had to research all the things my contracting team was buying with my money to make sure everything coming into my house is vegan. My house was used when I bought it, so I know it’s probably not a vegan house, but from this point forward, I have to do what I can to make sure the things I buy for it are vegan and cruelty free.

So here are some of the things I learned when doing my research that I’m hoping will help other vegans when it’s their turn to undergo a home renovation of any variety.

Cabinets

Did you know that some cabinetry isn’t vegan? I never thought about it before, but apparently, it’s true! If you get cabinets that use any of the following materials, they are probably NOT VEGAN.

  • pressed wood or particle board
  • plywood (except for Purebond Plywood, which claims to be soy-based)
  • fiberboard (also known as medium density fiberboard or MDF)

The reason those materials aren’t vegan is because they often use glues and adhesives that aren’t vegan.

Vegan Paint Brushes

So, the cabinet materials that ARE VEGAN include the following.

Are paint brushes vegan
  • metal
  • hardwood

Metal cabinets are really nice looking, but they are VERY expensive. I looked into getting them for my kitchen from IM Design, but it was way outside of my budget.

So, hardwood cabinets won! Hardwood does cost more than MDF and plywood, but you get what you pay for, which is longevity and durability. Solid wood cabinetry lasts around 50 years, which is great, because for the amount of money I’m paying for this remodel, it needs to last the rest of my lifetime, haha.

If you’re looking for an even more affordable vegan option for cabinets, I believe IKEA sells one line of cabinets that are vegan. The reason I didn’t go with IKEA is because they contain formaldehyde, and I am trying to avoid formaldehyde in my kitchen since I spend the majority of my waking hours there.

Why is Formaldehyde Bad?

While formaldehyde isn’t technically a non-vegan product, it’s not really something you want in your home. Cabinets with formaldehyde can offgas for up to a year, and if those gasses are coming off your cabinets, guess who’s breathing them in?

Most cabinets have formaldehyde, but the levels of formaldehyde differ, depending on what materials are used. Luckily, environmental protections have passed rules limiting the amount of formaldehyde allowed in cabinetry. The CARB II standards allow the following levels of formaldehyde in these cabinet materials.

  • thin fiberboard - .13 ppm
  • medium density fiberboard - .11 ppm
  • particle board - .09 ppm
  • hardwood plywood - .05 ppm

The CARB II standards are the strictest standards in the world right now (2021) in relation to interior building materials. Hopefully, they will improve over time, but for now, my goal is to have a formaldehyde-free kitchen. How do I do this? Read on about paint….

Vegan

Paint

Most kitchen cabinets come from the factory already finished with whatever paint the cabinet makers want. But guess what? Most paint isn’t cruelty free and vegan. I knowwww right? So annoying.

Luckily, Benjamin Moore is vegan and cruelty free, and they’re a reputable and high quality brand that many interior designers and renovators use. Our designer uses Benjamin Moore Aura for kitchens and bathrooms because it’s durable, mildew resistant, has good coverage (primer is built in). I like it because it’s low odor and zero VOC. I chose the colors Chantilly Lace white and Crocus Petal purple.

Why choose zero VOC paint?

VOCs (also known as Volatile Organic Compounds) are the chemicals in your paint that offgas. We talked about offgassing earlier so I won’t bore you, but you don’t want to be breathing chemicals for months after you paint anything inside your house, right? So, always purchase zero VOC paint.

As much as it annoyed the hell out of our designer, our contractors purchased our cabinets with no finish whatsoever. Then, the crew painted the cabinets using the vegan zero VOC paint that we chose.

Counters

Luckily, most counters nowadays use natural stone, which is natural and vegan. I chose a white quartz, which is very durable and low maintenance (it doesn’t need to be sealed annually like marble or granite).

So, if marble, granite, and quartz are all vegan, what kind of counters are NOT VEGAN?

  • laminate (Formica is one brand of laminate counters)
  • concrete (some is, some isn’t; Dap is a company that claims their cement is vegan)

Backsplash

Backsplashes are so weird to me. My dad has had this 70’s looking tile going up his wall in his kitchen since I was little, and it’s so ugly. But replacing backsplash tiles is apparently quite difficult. It’s so difficult in fact, that my kitchen crew opted to just cut large chunks of the wall out, rather than try to remove the tile backsplash in my kitchen.

Since tile and taste goes out of style every decade it seems, I opted for a changeable backsplash. It’s just clear glass attached to the wall with hardware, so that I can remove it when I get tired of my purple ombré, repaint the wall, and then put my glass backsplash back up. Remember, I’m spending half my life savings on this kitchen, so I never ever want to spend another dime on it as long as I live, haha.

Since my backsplash is just glass, it’s vegan. The only thing I can think of that might make a backsplash not vegan would be if the tile grout used non-vegan cement in it. So, maybe check with your tile grout company to see what ingredients it uses, just to be safe. And then if you find out, tell me so I can share the information!

David and I painted the ombré ourselves because our kitchen crew didn’t know how. We used the white that was used on all our kitchen cabinets (Chantilly Lace) and the purple used on our island accent wall (Crocus Petal) and made 5 new colors of paint for all the shades in between. We used 7 different vegan paint brushes, because you don’t want to share brushes between colors for an ombré wall (to make sure your brushes are vegan, just look for synthetic bristles).

As a recap, here’s what my kitchen looked like before the vegan kitchen remodel.

About dons backside. And here’s what it looks like now (it’s still not quite finished, as you can see from the photo).

Finishing Touches

One of my favorite finishing touches is the knobs we got for the 2 upper cabinets. The majority of the kitchen has handles (or what they call pulls) in a black matte finish to match the sink, faucet, and the backsplash hardware. However, I ordered just 2 little knobs for the upper cabinets where we keep the glasses and mugs. These knobs look so similar to a glass ball that my mom hung in my window when I was a little girl so that when the light hit it, it would make rainbows on my bedroom walls. Now I get to have those rainbows in my kitchen every day!

Another finishing touch that I want to add but haven’t purchased yet is to line some of the drawers with removable wallpaper. 5th geographical representationsmr. macs class 2019 20. If you don’t yet know about removable wallpaper, I think it’s kind of like those window cling stickers, where it peels and sticks onto a surface like a sticker (kind of like that contact paper from the 80s) but it comes off way easier. I made this list of ones that I like on my etsy page, but I can’t afford to buy it for every drawer so I need to figure out which drawers need protecting the most and just buy it for those.

Facilitybob mac stables. ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Please note that this blog post contains affiliate links, which means that if you order a product using one of my links, I receive a small commission. This commission helps me cover my blogging expenses so I can continue to create content for you. That being said, I would never recommend something I wouldn’t purchase myself.

I had never considered the impact of the wargaming hobbyon animals, so I thought I’d look in to it.
Tau enjoying a tofu & bean burrito (via http://destraudo.deviantart.com)

The two obvious places to start are paints and brushes.
In paints, ingredients from fish, bugs and cows can sneakin, like sepia ink, cochineal, ox gall, gelatin, shellac and bone char. There’sa few different brands of paints in my collection, and I asked themanufacturers about whether they contained animal ingredients.
Vegan Paint Brushes
Mike from Coat D'arms was the first to reply. He confirmedthat all their ingredients are synthetic, and mentioned that they’d been askedseveral times before. It is nice to know that I’m not the only one who cares!
Alex Vallejo from Acrylicos Vallejo said that they had a companypolicy to avoid using animal ingredients when possible, but they do have acouple items in their Fine Arts and Acrylic Artists Colour ranges that useshellac and bone char due to the lack of synthetic substitutes. Fortunately, theirmodel paints were free from squished bugs and burnt cow bones.

Vegan Paint Brushes Wholesale

Alex also pointed out their policy on REACH, the EUregulation that is requiring every chemical to undergo safety tests. Valajeohas consulted with their major chemical suppliers and with only a few very rareexceptions, all the REACH tests on the ingredients they buy are done on deadtissue only.
Amy,who makes the MSP paints for Reaper Mini, said that she has never seen anyanimal-derived products in their bases or pigments. She also confirmed that,for Reaper’s models, thecompanies they work with use plastic resins, minerals, and inorganicchemicals only.
PrivateerPress said that all their Formula P3 paints are not testedanimalsand do not containanimalproducts.
Citadel was the only range that I didn't get a straight answerfor. Games Workshop customerservice said if I send them a list of the paints I want to use, they’d let meknow if they contain animal products. It struck me as weird as this seemsto be a question that these companies do get asked a lot, so I would have hopedthat a company as big as Games Workshop would have answers ready. I didn't wantto waste too much of their time listing off every paint in the range for anindividual answer, so I just left it at that.
So far, things look really positive for anyone wanting touse paints without harming animals. But brushes are a bit of an issue.
On the side of fine hobby brushes, you’ll probably see thatit is marked as “red sable”. Red sable fur comes from Siberian weasels, ananimal that lives in Russia and China. I couldn’t find many sources on howthese hairs are obtained. I emailed brush companies and even the fur industry’spress office. No answers. animalethics.org.uk was the only source of moreinformation I could find.
Apparently, these weasels are caught in leghold trapsor snares, and the pelts are sold to the brushmakers who pluck and sort thehairs. For me, this is particularly worrying. Fur is nasty and I know I’m not alonein thinking so. An RSPCA survey in 2011 showed that 95% of British people wouldnot wear real fur. And leghold traps are so cruel they were banned in England& Wales in the 1950s for being “too inhumane”. If something was so bad itwas considered inhumane 60 years ago, you know it must be terrible. Further tothat, Russia and China have minimal animal protection laws. In countries likeCanada or Denmark, in theory, animals should not be left in traps for more thana day (they end up trying to chew their own leg off or dying in some othergrisly way). China or Russia don’t have similar animal welfare standards.
It is bleak.
So, the solution: Are there any synthetic brushes thatare up to the same standards? I’d love to hear thoughts on how well synthetic brushes hold up.

Vegan Oil Paint Brushes

For my personal ethics, I’ll keep using my current set brushesfor now. According to the Vegan Society, 'Veganism is a way of living thatseeks to exclude, as far as possible and practicable, all forms of exploitationof, and cruelty to, animals..' Thewords “as far as possible and practicable” stand out for me there. I don’tthink compassionate people should opt out of the real world and move to a hippycommune or something. I think it is important to play an active role innon-vegan communities to demonstrate just how easy it is to live a cruelty-freelifestyle. So, for now, that means continuing to paint with fur brushes until Ifind a decent alternative, and I’ll also continue to advocate for animals by bringing delicious vegansnacks to game nights to impress friends.

Are Morphe Brushes Vegan

From a bigger perspective, it would be great to askcompanies to look in to their sourcing properly. Being the biggest name inwargaming, I’d love to know if Games Workshop knows where its fur comes from.And for them to adopt an official policy on trying to avoid animal products,like Vallejo has. And to know if the company has a stance on animal testing, includingthe compulsory REACH testing. If any animal-friendly Games Workshop shareholders are readingthis, perhaps this is something you could help with.