The door of Juan Botero’s apartment in Houston, Texas is made of wood – with a classy, walnut-like complete.

But, for Halloween, he planned an eye-catching transformation. “I’m going to paint my door orange,” Mr Botero, founder and chief executive of Colombia-based Glasst, told the BBC last month. And he has kept his commitment.

However, the shift is not as drastic as it sounds. Mr Botero’s firm, an “innovation corporation”, has designed the paint to be removable – once arid, you can peel it off like plastic wrap. If it works as intended, it shouldn’t leave behind any marks or residue.

Mr Botero had the concept for the product, called Unpaint, about five years ago and, initially, his investors weren’t keen. “They said I was crazy,” he recalls. Nevertheless, he insisted: “People are looking for customisation in their lives.”

Glasst is just one of many firms that claim house paint can do more than look enjoyable. Various products now on the economy, their makers commitment, will save you money, keep you comfortable during heatwaves, or transform your connection with the walls of your home. But is it all too excellent to be factual?

Unpaint is due to launch in the US this November, and Mr Botero is convinced that there is a economy for the stuff. He argues it will appeal to people living in rented accommodation, who can’t make permanent changes to their decor.

Glasst, unsurprisingly, declines to distribute details about how it makes the paint, but Mr Botero says it is a resin from a renewable source. I inquire if he means trees and he confirms.

Peelable paint already exists for car bodywork, but getting such a product to work reliably on softer home interiors is more challenging.

There is a uncertainty of damaging your existing, underlying paint when you eventually wrest Unpaint off your walls, but, if the permanent paint below is in excellent state, this shouldn’t happen, says Mr Botero.

It does have an odd texture: “A little bit rubbery,” says Mr Botero. Plus, it is easier to scratch than water-based emulsion.

Bringing the product to economy hasn’t been straightforward. Glasst posted a video about the paint to YouTube two years ago, but the launch was delayed until this year “to align with the correct capital and resources needed,” says Mr Botero.

He mentions that Glasst is working on other coatings with unusual properties – including “Thermglasst”, an insulating resin due to launch next year. Mr Botero claims that less than a millimetre of this coating will provide the same insulating result as 40 millimetres of foam.

There’s no independent validation of that claim just yet, but there are already a range of insulating paints on the economy that commitment to reduce your heating bills and, it is fair to note, they have not always performed well in scientific evaluations.

In 2019, Richard Fitton of the University of Salford and colleagues published a document in which they investigated the efficacy of six thermal paints available on the UK economy at the period. In short, they found that claims that such paints could reduce heating bills by up to 20% or 25% were unfeasible to validate.

First, the researchers coated boards with the paints, which allowed them to assess the coatings’ thermal resistance, or insulating values. Then, the throng calculated the reduction in heating costs you would expect after applying each of these paints to the interior of a typical Victorian terraced house.

The biggest expense saving measured was a mere 2.9%, and, given the worth of the paints in question, homeowners would potentially have to wait centuries or even up to a millennium – at 2019 prices – before they would recoup the decorating fees in terms of reduced heating costs.

“If someone brought me a paint that could save me 25% of my vigor statement, it would be on my wall by the weekend,” says Prof Fitton. He adds that he is currently working on a pursue-up document to the 2019 study, and would also be open to testing Thermglasst, or any other insulating paint, in the upcoming.

Paints that assist to keep your house chilly might be more effective. For years, researchers have pursued the concept of improving the reflectivity of paint on exterior walls or roofs, since this could assist keep buildings chilly on warm, sunny days. Such weather is becoming ever more ordinary due to climate transformation.

The principle is as ancient as the hills – consider the white painted houses of the Mediterranean. But paints designed to be significantly more reflective than standard white paint could heighten the result. i2Cool in Hong Kong is one of several firms marketing such a product at now.

In their case, the paint contains tiny nanoparticles inspired by the extremely reflective body of the Saharan silver ant – which must naturally cope with baking sunshine.

Martin Zhu, chief executive and co-founder, says the paint made by i2Cool was tested on the roof of a shopping mall in Hong Kong – but only on one of its two buildings, in order to discover out whether there was a noticeable result in terms of reducing the costs of running that building’s air conditioning (AC).

“We used a power meter to assess the vigor consumption of the AC structure,” says Dr Zhu. The expense of running the AC duly fell in the painted building, by 40%, he adds.

Dr Zhu first began working on the paint while a doctoral learner, and he mentions that early versions made around 2017 contained silver, which made it very expensive – more than $100,000 just to cover a tiny area. Years of advancement later, it now costs around $10 per square metre of coverage. It also now comes in a variety of light colours, including grey, yellow and green.

Researchers have noted that highly reflective coatings for inactive cooling applications require to be resistant to dirt and soiling, for example, to avoid their efficacy dropping overt period. And glare from ultra-reflective roofs risks heating up nearby darker structures, a 2020 document suggested.

The paint from i2Cool does not contain heavy metals and uses a water-based emulsion, and while it is not biodegradable, it can be recycled, says Dr Zhu.

The corporation’s latest major assignment is the Dubai Mall. The roof of this sprawling complicated – the largest mall in the globe by total area – will eventually be fully coated with the paint. A 1,000 sq m section has been completed to date.

While not yet available in Europe, that could transformation, says Dr Zhu. “We are discussing with some distributors in the UK,” he says.