Breathable emulsion paints for interior walls (normal gypsum plaster)?

[Missnearlyvintage]

Hi everyone,

We have been advised that we have a minor damp problem in our house due to a building defect - there is no easy way to cure the defect, and we have instead been told that using a breathable paint to let the small amount of moisture out of the bottom of our ground floor walls is the way to go (2 different surveyors have advised this).

Having done a bit of research I have found three brands who say that some of their paint ranges are highly breathable - Farrow and Ball estate emulsion, Earthborn claypaint, and auro eco emulsions.

I was just wondering if anyone has had experience with painting with breathable paints for this purpose and whether you know of any other ranges we could look at please?

There will be new gypsum plaster at the bottom of the walls and this will be the material that needs painting in breathable paint. We have vinyl paints elsewhere in the rooms on the walls, and I have no intention of stripping all of this off so I am contemplating having a strip of breathable emulsion at the bottom of the walls, and then a wipe-able emulsion in the same shade on the rest of the walls as I really do not think we will be able to keep the walls clean otherwise! (Though I know this will look slightly odd with the different paint finished/textures, but at this point 2 years into to renovations I am willing to compromise...)

Thanks! Sorry for the long post!

As I understand it, Dulux supermatt is a breathable emulsion. Although, like estate emulsion, not especially hard wearing in terms of knocks and fingerprints.

How long will you be doing this for?

How long for the walls to dry out?

Thanks! I'll have a look at the dulux super Matt technical spec and see if it would be suitable, if only for the bottoms of the walls.

3luckystars - it'll always be a little bit damp. Hopefully we've made it as dry as possible with some remedial works, but because of the damp proof course being too high internally apparently, there will always be low level moisture entering the house. It's taken over 30 years to create a very small amount of damage, only noticeable since we applied vinyl paints to the walls really, so this is an exercise in choosing paints that will not perish quickly in the given conditions.

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