I Tried an “Architectural Wellness Paint” to Transform My Basement Into a Bar

This is Making a Bar, a four-part DIY series in which our intrepid Executive Editor turns her under-utilized basement into the hopefully chic home hangout of her dreams.

We are living in a golden age of paint. No more are the days of whatever brands are available at your local hardware store—now there are plenty of options, which means that people craving exciting colors, brands, and safety have their pick of what to choose from. But my curiosity was still sparked when I first heard about Alkemis Paint, a new offer on the market as of last year, which promises to be "the world’s first architectural wellness paint." What did that mean—and did I need it?

Alkemis was founded by Maya Crowne and Price Latimer, and seeks to be even a cut above the environmentally friendly, zero or low VOC paints that have become the accepted standard. With wide-ranging business and creative backgrounds, the two set out to make a different kind of paint. Their 119 shades are mineral-based, making them non-toxic and zero-VOC. They’re made of quartz crystalline pigments, which they claim go further than just not being bad for you; they’re actually good for you. "These functional wellness pigments may help improve the air inside one’s home, absorb and neutralize chemicals, emit positive ions, reduce stress levels and boost one’s mood, all while maintaining a unique, velvet-matte finish that celebrates the world’s natural beauty," read the company’s press materials. "Together we can raise the vibration of our home planet by starting with our most intimate space... our four walls."

Bold claims! But I was eager to investigate further. Though I’d used a Benjamin Moore Aura low VOC paint for my last interior DIY project—painting our sunroom—and been happy with the results, it was still a smelly week of work, particularly if you’re prone to headaches like I am. And as luck would have it, I was about to start on a much-delayed project: to turn our largely unused downstairs kitchenette into a bar. So I reached out to the company about getting a sample to try, and got ready to have my mind rocked by paint.

Let’s begin at the very beginning

Since I’d been putting off this project for a few years, I’d had ample time to think about aesthetics, and had done a lot of waffling back and forth. Some of waffling was not my fault—the space in question is weirdly shaped—a sort of fat L shape with a specific ceiling and wall set up resulting from us ripping out the previous drop ceiling and having to do some creative drywalling to fix the walls that didn’t go all the way up to the actual ceiling. As such, our downstairs is a space I would generously call "rustic," so I knew whatever vision we landed on would have to account for a lot of little quirks. This meant that every time I thought about a color or material, I would have to see if it would work with half a dozen other details—which ruled out a lot of concepts.

But after some iterating, I came up with a vibe I could get behind. Our house is a 1970 raised ranch with an overall vintage feel—think basically entirely pre-owned furniture, a lot of color, and wood. I’m calling this space "elevated dive bar," leaning into kitsch in a hopefully chic way—like your favorite bar that has, yes, a neon Corona sign with a flamingo on it (we got ours from a local bodega that seemed happy to part with it), but clean. (And if not, the space isn’t highly used, so those who don’t approve wouldn’t have to look at it.)

Alkemis, with its matte finish, seemed like a great choice—I needed to go with a ’70s colorway on the walls to lean into this energy. The space in question also only has one small window—hence, bar—and is half underground (the Raised Ranch style means its built into a hill), so their explanation that the paints’ materiality means it’s "100% water vapor-permeable" making it "virtually impossible" for mold to grow on the walls made it even more of an easy sell.

After getting sent over a fan deck—which will cost you $45 if you want all the colors, or you can order individual sample swatches for $8 a piece—I chose Terlingua, an earthy red-brown and used the company’s calculator to confirm that I’d need about a gallon for this project (which would cover two coats; the paint is self-priming.) At $120 per gallon, this is at the high end of the market; for context, a gallon of Backdrop costs around $75, while a gallon of Farrow & Ball is more like $140).

Painting

You’ve likely painted before, so I don’t need to walk you through how that works. But there’s a few things about Alkemis being a mineral paint that make it specific. The company recommends using a slow speed drill and a paddle mixer to mix the paint to make sure that the shade is consistent throughout before you go in, but honestly I probably could have skipped that step and been fine. It also dries quickly, so they recommend cutting in (i.e. painting the edges with a brush, not a roller) only what you think "you can paint within an hour." Because of this, I tackled the wall in sections, working on the trim, and then going in and rolling. Besides the fact that I always forget how exhausting painting anything is, it was, dare I say, fun and different, to paint something so matte—the last time I embarked on a project like this, it was with semi-gloss—and I immediately noticed that there was basically no smell to the product. I was fully headache free, which felt amazing. ("The product is free of solvents and biocides, and emits no odor or toxic chemicals, making it safe for all living beings," the company notes.)

I finished one coat of the room in a few hours, and even with just the one, it was fairly solid on its own, with minimal streaking. It was incredibly easy to clean up, both off of my skin and the surfaces it accidentally got on around it—just a wipe with water. The next day I went back in and did a slightly less thorough second coat; if this room got more light, I would have been more precise and thorough, but it’s kind of a dark cave and I was exhausted so there is some slight streaking due to user error (and only seen in certain lights). The color was a hit. With one design victory under my belt, I had full confidence to take on the next step of the project: cork tiling the complicated back wall.

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