BadigeonAir lime (CL)
Badigeon de chaux
A lime paint, whatever its name suggests: brushed on thin, it keeps the grain of the wall and moves with the light.
A cottage of 1600 in Ixworth, painted the traditional Suffolk pink of the county’s limewashes: the colour is in the coat, and the relief of the plaster still reads through it.
Photo Sophie Curtis · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
At a glance
- Water
- Steam only
- Outside
- Exposed
- Floor
- Walls only
- Upkeep
- Periodic
- Vapour
- Vapour-open
What it is made of
1 volume of air lime to 2–4 volumes of water depending on how opaque you want it, pigments, marble flour or talc, sometimes casein as a fixative.
Application
The support
A sound mineral ground with no film-forming paint: stone, brick, lime render. Brush it, fill with lime, dampen before every coat.
Tools
Natural-bristle limewash brush, bucket, mixing paddle.
Steps
- 1Make up the wash (1 volume of lime to 2–4 of water) with pre-dispersed pigments, and let it stand overnight.
- 2A thinner first coat, brushed in every direction to work into the support.
- 3Two or three richer coats after it, crossing the strokes.
- 4Shield from direct sun, wind and rain while it sets.
Drying
24 h between coats; the final colour shows after one to two weeks of carbonation.
The trade’s general sequence, at about 20 °C. Where a producer publishes its own data sheet, that sheet wins.
Price
4 products from 3 producers
Cheapest pot
17.64 €
1 kg
Per kilo, from
8.80 €
Per litre, from
not published
Per m², from
not published
| Product | From | €/kg · €/L | €/m² |
|---|---|---|---|
| Badigeon à la chauxBiologement | 17.64 € | 10.46 €/kg | — |
| Badisof — badigeon de chaux aérienneSociété des Ocres de France | 40.00 € | 8.80 €/kg | — |
| Badisof Plus — badigeon de chaux pour l'extérieurSociété des Ocres de France | 40.00 € | 8.80 €/kg | — |
| Badigeon de Chaux - BadimatMercadier | — | — | — |
Material prices incl. VAT as published by this catalogue’s producers, samples excluded. Labour is never included, and a price per m² only exists where the producer publishes a coverage.
Upkeep
Dusted dry; a refresh coat every 3–5 years indoors, every 10–15 on a facade.
- Demands · Periodic
- Vapour-open
On a real wall
A lime badigeon over brick: at two tenths of a millimetre the coat covers the wall without erasing a single joint.
Photo Jaggery · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons