All the creative freedom you need

Smooth or tex­tured, white or colored, matte or glossy – plasters can be used to effect­ively design your own four walls. This not only applies to the out­er facade, but above all to the interi­or of your home. Wheth­er liv­ing or din­ing room, bed­room, chil­dren’s room or bath­room – every room offers count­less pos­sib­il­it­ies for cre­at­ively design­ing walls and ceil­ings with plasters, right up to the Vene­tian plaster tech­nique. Let your ima­gin­a­tion run wild – there are vir­tu­ally no lim­its.

Basic­ally, there are two main groups of plasters avail­able to do-it-your­­selfers and pro­fes­sion­al crafts­men. The first group is min­er­al plasters, con­sist­ing of lime, cement, gypsum, alu­mina, quartzite or clay. Thanks to their ingredi­ents, these plasters are cap­able of dif­fu­sion, which means they can absorb and release mois­ture from ambi­ent air. In this way, they help to nat­ur­ally con­trol and improve the indoor cli­mate. How­ever, as a res­ult of fluc­tu­ations in tem­per­at­ure and humid­ity, cracks may form in min­er­al plasters.

This is where the strength of cer­tain plasters, known as dis­per­sion plasters, comes into play: Their high flex­ib­il­ity pre­vents crack­ing or spalling – even when room tem­per­at­ures and humid­ity levels fluc­tu­ate sig­ni­fic­antly. Dis­per­sion plasters owe this prop­erty to their ingredi­ents. In addi­tion to syn­thet­ic res­in as a bind­er, they con­tain vari­ous organ­ic or min­er­al fillers. But unlike min­er­al plasters, these plasters are not cap­able of vapor dif­fu­sion. It is there­fore highly import­ant to prop­erly air the rooms. To bene­fit from the advant­ages of both types of plaster, man­u­fac­tur­ers have now developed products that com­bine min­er­al ingredi­ents with syn­thet­ic res­in. There are, for instance, dis­per­son plasters that have been mixed with silic­ates and sil­ic­ones, some of which are open to dif­fu­sion.

Because of their ingredi­ents and the asso­ci­ated emis­sion prop­er­ties, these plasters did not have the best repu­ta­tion for a long time. Mean­while, this has changed, because there are now also health-com­pat­ible products for your home. Import­ant: When choos­ing a plaster, con­sumers should watch out for EMICODE^®-cer­ti­fied products, even if a crafts­man makes the choice for them. Just a quick glance is enough: Low-emis­­sion and health-com­pat­ible interi­or plasters can now be eas­ily recog­nized by the EMICODE^® seal on the pack­aging. Only plasters that meet the strin­gent emis­sion lim­its for volat­ile organ­ic com­pounds (VOCs) are awar­ded the eco label. The EMICODE^® thus meets the grow­ing demands for a healthy liv­ing envir­on­ment.