
I heard that sage can help with the smell that occurs from painting a room. Since we recently finished our rental property and, of course, have more in our future, I decided to find out what else helps when painting. When you’re just doing one room, it’s not such a big deal (unless you are very sensitive to certain smells) but when doing an entire house along with closets and a basement, and several people are painting at the same time, it can cause quite a strong odor. So if you are interested in ways to eliminate this problem, here are a few things that I found:
-Besides the obvious like opening windows, use a fan to blow the air toward the window.
-If you are painting during warmer weather, air conditioning turned up higher should help eliminate the smell.
- A few buckets of room temp water placed at opposite ends of the room should absorb the smell within a day or two. It keeps the room humid which hastens the process. You can use lemon or vanilla extract in the buckets or slice real lemons to add a more pleasant smell.

-Crushed coffee grounds or charcoal or baking soda in a few bowls work within a day or two.
-Burning incense or sage won’t remove the odor but they will help to mask it.
-There are also odor eliminating candles. (These would also be great to have on hand when cooking fish or broccoli or other strong-smelling foods. I’ll be putting those on my shopping list.)
- If you have an air purifier, use it since that also helps.
-And, best of all, you can buy a low VOC (volatile organic compound) paint. Although they cost more they really have very little paint smell.
Happy Painting!

For more information check out: https://www.wikihow.com/Get-Rid-of-Paint-Smells
Source: Excerpt from WikiHow