Crafting colour and texture in hand-made paints, wallpapers and timber flooring for 35 years.
Our history starts in 1982, when Sydney house painter Peter Lewis began making traditional lime washes in a small garage in Randwick, after having discovered old paint recipes in his grandfather's diaries.
Fred Porter was a builder, and it was during his European travels that he collected details of building techniques and paint finishes.
It was shortly after his death that Peter discovered the diaries, found the recipes for traditional paints and decided to produce improved versions.
Porter’s Paints now has nine stores in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane and our paint and wallpaper is sold in over 100 speciality paint and decorating stores across Australia.
We also proudly export our products to distributors in New Zealand, Asia, USA and the United Kingdom.
Fred Porter’s Diaries
In the early 1900’s, Fred Porter was a builder with keen eye for design.
Fred travelled extensively throughout Europe collecting time-honoured paint recipes and building techniques, recording them in a series of diaries.
Fred’s work as a builder can still be seen around Sydney today.
He built iconic Australian buildings such as "Boomerang" in Elizabeth Bay (1928), the Capitol Theatre (1928) and the State Theatre (1929) in Sydney.
Many years later, these recipes inspired the very first Porter's paints.
After discovering the diaries in 1982, Fred’s grandson Peter Lewis began making traditional lime washes in his small garage in Randwick, combining the finest ingredients with passion and imagination.
Today, Porter’s Paints continues to innovate with its unique range of paints, timbers and wallpapers.
Available locally and internationally, Porter’s traditional and modern finishes combine the finest ingredients and materials with the latest technologies.
Environmental Commitment
Everything we do is designed to minimise our impact on the environment, from low VOC paints to ethical sourcing of our timber flooring:
- The Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) that are found in paint solvents contribute to atmospheric pollution and the degradation of the ozone layer. All our paints are formulated and manufactured with user health and the environment in mind, and we have a range of paint options that are classified by APAS (Australian Paint Approval Scheme) as Very Low VOC (<5g/L) and Low VOC (5-49g/L). We also have a very traditional paint finish that is Zero VOC (Milk Paint).
- Porter’s Paints are founding participants in PaintBack®, a national waste paint collection and treatment scheme for left over paints and packaging.
- The oak in our flooring range is ethically sourced from rigorously controlled state owned French forests, while the multi-ply base is made from fast growing plantation timbers.