Paint

If YOU'RE dressing up your house with a fresh coat of color, a new generation of paints will help the environment, though not your pocketbook. Starting July 1, all flat paints made, sold and used within Orange and major portions of San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles counties must have 50 grams or less of volatile organic compounds per liter. Because flats are what most people put on the exterior of their homes, this means there will be more, and better, water-based latex paint.

IF you've ever agonized over what neutral modern shade to paint your Tudor, Mediterranean or Cape Cod living room (or wished you had the guts to choose a daring color), you might want to take a lesson from Shelley Bennett. As curator of British and European art at the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, Bennett confronted and conquered the color conundrum for the John Constable landscapes show, which opens Saturday. Bennett is no amateur at choosing colors.

CARL MINCHEW is a paint nerd. While the rest of us walk into a room and instantly see radiant walls that pop or ho-hum coatings that sink into the background, he sees a complex recipe of binders, pigments, drying oils and surface active agents. The director of color technology for Benjamin Moore can spot uneven microscopic surfaces and the way they monkey with paint and light. The right paint -- thick, smooth and vibrant, he says, looks and even feels better.

Parents scoured children's playrooms and retailers scurried to clear their shelves after manufacturers ordered a series of recalls this summer, saying millions of popular toys may have been made with lead paint. But the risk of lead poisoning is as strong as ever, experts say; it's just that the biggest threat probably isn't in the toy box.

A judge ruled that Rhode Island cannot seek punitive damages against three lead paint makers found liable for creating a public nuisance in the state. The companies -- Sherwin-Williams Co., NL Industries Inc. and Millennium Holdings -- still must pay to remove the danger of peeling lead paint in homes, which could cost billions of dollars.

A state appellate court in Los Angeles reinstated a lawsuit Friday by California cities and counties that seeks to force eight paint manufacturers to clean up lead paint used in low-income housing and government buildings. The reinstatement follows a victory at trial last week by the state of Rhode Island, which accused some of the same manufacturers of helping to create a significant public health crisis by making and selling lead-based paint.

Art conservators have had several centuries to figure out the nature of oil paint. They know how weather, humidity and chemical changes can affect it over time. They know how it oxidizes, cracks and turns yellow and how to clean it. Modern paints, made over the last 70 years with an ever-expanding array of synthetic products, are much more perplexing. Help is on the way in "Modern Paints," a symposium at Tate Modern in London today through Thursday.

Several companies take back customers' unused paints -- usually large quantities bought by commercial operations -- then filter, remix and resell them. It reduces waste headed for the landfill, saves the energy used to manufacture new paint and usually saves money. One downside: limited colors. The Sundance Catalog's six-color Prairie Paints line is 100% recycled content (supposedly overages returned by decorators). Go to www.sundancecatalog.com and click on "Home Decor."

Summer is high season for home improvement projects, so there are likely to be pyramids of leftover paint cans sitting in garages by this time of year. Here are some tips on reducing, reusing, recycling and removing leftover paint. * Don't purchase more than you need. Before buying paint for a project, calculate the approximate amount needed.

After a few days on display in a downtown warehouse, an elaborately painted live elephant was washed down Sunday by order of the city's Department of Animal Services. Tai, a 38-year-old female Indian elephant, had been painted trunk to tail as part of a downtown art exhibit.