FAQ

• Where can one get the colour cards for your products?
  
  

  All our colour cards are available at our sales points with the HGMIX mixing system.
  The HGMIX mixing system enables the preparation of the selected colour shade based on a large number of colour cards, such as: Terra, Monicolor 720, Eurotrend, RAL, NCS and several others.

  The colour cards can also be obtained from different professionals we work with (painters, facade builders). For individual products, some shades can also be seen on our websites.

   

• I am renovating a 30-year old apartment, which I want to repaint and later on also paint a couple of the walls with stronger shades. The walls do not have any particularities (no large stains or mould). We are expecting a baby so we would like to use a paint with no unpleasant odour or harmful substances. Which paint can you recommend?

  To paint indoor surfaces, we recommend SPEKTRA interior wall paints which are available in different qualities and shades. Considering the fact there will be little children living in the house, we recommend SPEKTRA PREMIUM interior wall paint which enables wet wiping. The paint is highly vapor permeable, has good hiding power and a beautiful matt appearance, and you can order it in the colour shade you want. If you are happy with white surface and with a coating resistant to dry wiping, we recommend using SPEKTRA Extra, which is easy to apply and provides good hiding power.
  
  Each paint has also a certain scent of raw materials - acrylic binders, which is typical for all water-based paints. The scent will remain in the room for a few days at most, until the coating is thoroughly dry. The paint is not harmful and is made in accordance with the latest standards of the European legislation.

  You can find all technical information about the products on our websites.

• We are soon planning to paint our newly-built apartment. As we would like to have coloured walls in some of the rooms, I would like to know where we could get colour cards of a bigger size than those available at the stores. It is difficult to get an idea of how everything will look like, as the colour cards you can get at the store are very small and you cannot transfer them to your apartment. Do you have any advice on this matter? What do you think about coloured ceilings?
  

  Firstly, let us give you some tips to make your colour shade selection easier.
  
  As far as colour samples are concerned, they are only available in the colour card sizes. The size of the sample is sometimes too small for us to be able to imagine how the final result on the wall will look like. That is why painters, architects and regular customers sometimes buy two liters of paint, with which they first paint a test wall in the room.
  
  Regarding choosing the intensity of the colour shade: if you wish to have a strong, yet not brash shade, choose intensity F, G and H from the scale, if using the Helios Monicolor 720 colour card. In the second and third row, the shades are light, however, they look intense enough when actually painted on the wall. Lighter shades can then be combined with very intense shades in order to brighten up the room.
  
  Coloured ceilings are a matter of taste, but do not go overboard with intense shades as they can make the ceiling optically lower and make the ambiance “heavy”, and vice-versa. In practice, the G113 shade (cappuccino) can be very nicely used as a base shade instead of using white (walls and ceilings). Even though this shade does not look special on the colour card, it makes a very elegant effect and does not clash with any of the colours of wooden objects or other elements in the house. Furthermore, you can combine it with any other shade in order to make a subtle transition to more intensive shades. The transition from white to more intensive shades can generate a contrast that is too strong and irritating.
  
  Some more lighter shades which look nice on walls, and some strong ones to brighten up the room are: G058, G095, G079 in combination with G058, G021, G015; J082 in combination with J021; H084 in combination with z J122, K138, N125, S003, K015, L043.

  For additional information you can call our technical-support service.

• I have a room that is quite long and narrow. How should I paint it to make it look wider?
  

  We forwarded the question to our technical consultants which usually provide advice on the matter, however, it is difficult to give an accurate answer without seeing the room.

  In general it applies that dark shades make the room visually smaller, whereas light shades make it bigger. Therefore, we recommend painting the long sides of the wall with light shades, and the short ones with dark shades. This is the basic and simplest solution to visually broaden the room.

• We used some kind of epoxy resin and sand for the treatment of the plinth of our house 25 years ago. The surface is level and rough, without grease. Unfortunately, there is already a lot of damage and the paint (light brown) is not equal either. What kind of paint to use for renovation?

  Epoxy resins are not a material that can be used for outdoor sun exposure, as epoxy itself is UV-unstable in direct sunlight, so we assume you have something similar to a mosaic that contains marble sands in the acrylic binder.

  
  We suggest testing the product on a small surface first. Buy SPEKTRA acrylic impregnation and SPEKTRA acrylic paint for concrete in the desired shade and follow the procedure below:
  1. wash the surfaces with water,
  2. impregnate the washed and dried surfaces with SPEKTRA acrylic impregnation, thinned with water in a 1:1 ratio (minimum 6 hours of drying),
  3. then, following an interval of at least 8 hours, paint the surfaces with SPEKTRA acrylic paint for concrete.

• Hello! I intend to paint/protect the exterior part of my beehives in the spring. The beehives will not be in the bee house, but outdoors, exposed to the rain, sun, wind and cold. I would like to know which coating you would recommend for a good protection of wood, which would at the same time have a minimum effect on the sensitive bees and their products.

  In your case, we recommend using the environmentally-friendly water-based coating for wood, BORI.

  
  The beehive and hive panels should not be coated with products containing biocides. We only recommend using the shaded BORI woodstain in 3 coats. The drying time between individual coats should be at least 3 hours.

  Before assembling the beehives, we recommend coating all transversal cuts with BORI woodstain, as this is where wood absorbs the most water which consequently leads to the drying of the paint.
  It is very important that the wood is dry before the painting.

• What to use to paint hallways in our new house? We would like to use a brown colour shade.

  As you did not specify the desired intensity of the brown shade, we recommend two products.
  
  If the house is new, we assume is has thermal insulation and that you do not have any problems with thermal bridges. In this case, we recommend using SPEKTRA LATEX MATT. All more intense and darker brown shades are sensitive to the touch of a finger as they leave white spots on the surface. As the paint has a smooth film, it is sufficient to wipe the surface with a moist cloth only.
  
  For light brown shades, you could also use the interior SPEKTRA PREMIUM washable paint.

• What can we do with old paints and lacquers? Can they be disposed somewhere free of charge? Where in Ljubljana and its surroundings is it possible to dispose such waste? Can it be returned to the manufacturers?

  In Ljubljana, and elsewhere as well, the Snaga company organizes a free-of-charge collection of hazardous waste (paints, lacquers, batteries, different oils, etc.). For more information, please contact the company.

  
  If you have Helios paints left, you can also contact us.