Like many people who are new to old French houses, we spent a lot of time researching lime paint. We worked through a variety of recipes that we found online as well as trying a couple of off-the-shelf options. The off-the-shelf products we found worked really well, but for the area we need worked out quite expensive at around €120 for 12L*.

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In the end we settled on a recipe using lime putty (chaux en pâte) with a premixed admixture that works well and costs around €2 per litre* (although on bare plaster walls it still requires about five coats. With a brush!).

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The next thing we needed to work out was how much we would need. Since the first thing I did when we moved into our house was measure every room in order to create my floorplans, it was a relatively simple job to create a little spreadsheet to calculate material quantities and costs.

 

You can download our calculator in Excel here. It is very straightforward, just input dimensions for the rooms you want to paint and the material quantities will get calculated for you! If you have any questions, please get in touch.  

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* Costs are provided as a reference only based on the time when the project was conducted, 2023.