Water-Based Paint Now in Furniture Tender Documents: Why It Matters

As health awareness and environmental enforcement strengthen, water-based paint has become one of the benchmarks of green office furniture thanks to its distinctly healthy, eco-friendly character. As a result, tender documents in many cities across the country have begun requiring that certain items — or all — of the office furniture, such as desks and chairs, executive desks, conference tables, and filing cabinets, be finished with water-based paint. Schools and administrative institutions, in particular, attach great importance to whether office furniture uses water-based paint.

So why is water-based paint called eco-friendly paint, and what are the benefits of choosing furniture finished with it? Today, this article gives a comprehensive analysis of the hard-core strengths of water-based paint.

First: What is water-based paint?

In water-based paint, water acts as the solvent or dispersion medium, so it contains no organic solvents such as benzene or xylene and requires no curing agent. During production, water-based paint also does not emit large amounts of volatile organic compounds (VOC). Furniture finished with water-based paint is therefore more eco-friendly — even on scorching hot days, you can't smell any irritating odor.

Second: Three major advantages of water-based paint

It's worth noting that the eco-friendliness of water-based paint not only meets the demands of “green office,” it also offers the following advantages:

1. More beautiful: To this day, some still mistakenly believe that the hardness and film fullness of water-based paint fall short of solvent-based paint. In fact, with technological progress, water-based paint technology has matured and long since overcome that problem. Its high transparency can also achieve the sophisticated “see the wood, not the paint” visual effect, making custom office furniture look more high-end.

2. No yellowing: The ingredients in oil-based paint determine that it will “yellow” — an insurmountable problem. But water-based paint does not contain large amounts of readily yellowing substances such as nitrocellulose or PU, so furniture finished with it, even after long use, can stand the test of time.

3. More durable: With water-based paint, the film does not get thinner over time, so it always remains the furniture's protective coat, making office furniture more wear-resistant, more heat-resistant, more waterproof, and easier to maintain.

Third: Water-based paint finishing technology is crucial

Of course, there is a saying in the industry: “thirty percent paint, seventy percent application.” Without a good painting process, even good water-based paint technology cannot be fully realized. After all, for furniture buyers, what they ultimately use is the furniture product itself — good texture and visual effect are what bring users a high-end experience.

Water-based paint has reached a 90% adoption rate in the EU coating industry. However, because the equipment is expensive and the process complex, many domestic office furniture manufacturers lack the capability to adopt this advanced technology. Even among those using water-based paint, differences in process maturity, production control capabilities, and raw material quality lead to different final product performance.

For a furniture manufacturer, applying water-based paint technology to production usually requires long-term testing and fine-tuning to ensure product stability and healthy, eco-friendly performance. As early as 2015, Yihang independently developed and launched its 7'PLUS water-based finishing technology, winning the “China Light Industry Science and Technology Progress Award.” The technology took three years of development, repeated testing, and improvement before it truly came to market. Today, Yihang's 7'PLUS water-based finishing technology is fully applied to Yihang's solid-wood lacquered products — not only eco-friendly and beautiful, but also preventing wood cracking and effectively extending the service life of office furniture.

Summary:

The green economy is the trend of the future, and the office furniture industry is destined to build a more natural, eco-friendly green ecosystem. We believe the era of “water-based paint” for office furniture is coming in full. Later, we will also share how to identify good water-based paint, so you can purchase higher-quality office furniture.