A Pollution-Fighting Skin? Yes, There’s a Product for That

October Product Trends — **Limpha**

A self-cleaning surface is a feature of products ranging from paints to porcelain wall panels such as Limpha (shown) by manufacturer Casalgrande Padana.

*Photo © courtesy the manufacturer*

It is an interesting time to track self-cleaning, pollution-fighting building products, because the innovative technology behind this category keeps evolving and is now being incorporated into everything from paint to roofing granules to porcelain wall panels.

Typically a self-cleaning coating is one that is made with titanium dioxide—an ingredient they all share—and reacts to sunlight, triggering a breakdown of airborne dirt into water-soluble particles that rain can wash away. There is a caveat, however: A 2013 Indiana University study published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society questions what happens if too many buildings shed too much nitrogen oxide, the byproduct of this self-cleaning process, which can lead to ozone pollution. While the verdict is still out, proponents, though, continue to hold up cost-savings on maintenance compared with more frequent power-washing or manual cleaning of large buildings using detergents in some urban settings.

View the slideshow for a quick sampling of recent developments.

This story was featured in Material World, Architectural Record’s products-focused newsletter. Subscribe today!

Kelly Beamon was the products editor for Architectural Record and managed the monthly products newsletter Material World. Before joining the staff of RECORD, she worked as a senior editor for This Old House and Interior Design, and as the managing editor of Surface. As the executive editor of HD magazine, she moderated talks on design trends for HDExpo, an annual hospitality design conference held in Las Vegas. She has also been quoted on design by the New York Times, ABC News, and USA Today and has written columns on American house styles and kitchen and bath trends. She has a B.A. in English from Chatham University in Pittsburgh and 18 years of architecture and design writing to her credit. She resides in Brooklyn with two children, two guinea pigs, and threadbare period original furnishings by George Nelson, Kazuhide Takahama, Charles and Ray Eames, and Gustav Stickley.