While most people would like that "new car" smell to stay as long as possible, they usually prefer the smell of a freshly painted room to go away instantly.

In fact, people often have to leave their home when it is being repainted, and come back a few days after the paint odor has subsided.

Even though the majority of interior paint applied today is water based latex paints, few realize that standard water-based paint still contains some solvents called volatile organic compounds, or VOCs that help give the paint its consistency and texture when wet.

As the paint dries, the solvents evaporate into the air, giving off that new-paint smell that can be potentially unhealthy, especially for pregnant women, small children, and those with allergies.

This increasing awareness about indoor air quality led the country's leading paint manufacturer, Boysen® Paints, to make sure that its newest product Virtuoso Silk Touch™ would set the benchmark for safety and compliance with environmental standards. Virtuoso Silk Touch™ is not only almost odourless, but has lower VOC levels than the strictest limits set by the US and European standards.

"We designed Virtuoso™ to be the best interior paint in the market, so aside from its superior performance properties, we made sure it would set the standard in safety and environmental friendliness," says Johnson Ongking, vice president of Pacific Paint (Boysen) Philippines, Inc. "Even though there are no VOC regulations in the Philippines, we used the latest paint technology available to keep the VOC content in Virtuoso™ as low as possible."