Painting a room is the simplest way to make it feel fresh and pulled together. But until recently, updating your home required introducing toxins into your environment. VOCs, or Volatile Organic Compounds, are the primary problem in paint. They produce ozone, which makes you dizzy, and can trigger asthma attacks, irritate your eyes, and has been linked to kidney disease and some cancers. Conventional paints also include a host of other known toxins - over 300 of them, on average.

Happily, paint manufactures have introduced dozens of readily available alternatives. They cost a bit more, running around $35. Using one of these new paints, however, makes a DIY job a true pleasure: You won’t feel sick while you’re working, and you won’t be polluting your home.

Differences between alternative paints are difficult to decipher, and no mandatory standard for labeling paint exists. Green Seal, an independent non-profit that sets standards for environmentally responsible products, offers a certification to manufactures based on a host of important concerns, including VOC content, the absence of chemicals, durability, and performance. To guarantee that a product is actually an improvement over conventional paint, look for the Green Seal label, and be prepared to pay more for increasingly pure products.

Here are the three families of alternative paint:

Low VOC Paint. This is the most fluid category, and some paints are labeled "Low-VOC" or "No Odor" but still contain relatively dangerous VOC levels. Green Seal’s standards are much stricter than the EPA's, so beware of "EPA-certified" paints without the Green Seal emblem. The EPA standard for a low-VOC paint is 250 g/L for latex, but Green Seal requires 50 g/L. "Low-VOC" paints are readily available at all the big-box home stores and national paint stores.

Zero VOC Paint. "Zero-VOC" really means "very-low-VOC," usually under 5 g/L. This is the least toxic type of paint produced by national paint manufacturers. Again, the best Zero-VOC will be Green Seal certified. (Harmony Paint by Sherwin Williams, Mythic Paint, and Yolo Colorhouse meet this specification.)

Natural Paint. These paints are produced by small companies, and unless you live in a large city you’ll have to order them online. They are made from natural ingredients, like water, plant dyes, and beeswax. If you have chemical sensitivities, however, you should still read the label carefully. Those allergic to oranges, for example, probably won’t want to paint a house with an orange-oil based product. Texture and performance vary between brands, and you will want to read consumer reviews to decide which one best fits your project. Overall, though, the natural paint companies are producing high-quality products that produce lovely results. (Brands include Bio Shield and Old Fashioned Milk Paint.)

These categories only consider the base of the paint, but pigments (the color that gets added in at the store) usually add between 3 to 5 g/L of VOC’s, and some colors, like yellows and some reds, are often made from heavy metals. Again, you’ll need to use your own judgment as your determine your comfort level for chemical exposure.

All options, however, are better than the paints of ten years ago, and you’ll notice an immediate difference in odor that hints at the potential long-lasting positive impact on your family’s health.