The Best Kid and Child-Safe Paints and Oils for Wooden Toys

Kids are known for exploring their world using their mouths rather than their hands, and parents often find themselves concerned about safety. It’s easy to identify any loose parts or obvious choking hazards, but knowing whether paints and dyes are safe is another matter entirely.

RMP’s milk paints are CPSC Compliant making them kid and child-safe so you don’t have to worry about them ingesting toxic chemicals found in most paints. Whether you’re looking for a pretty shade of yellow to dress up a rolling wooden duck or building a stacking rainbow perfect for your toddler, Real Milk Paint’s non-toxic paint for kids is a stress-free way to indulge your creativity and protect your family at the same time.

Natural, Child-Safe Paint Ingredients

Forget long, complicated chemicals you can’t even pronounce. While commercial paint is chock full of everything from formaldehyde to benzene, Real Milk Paint’s kid-safe paint contains simple ingredients such as milk protein, lime, and earth-based pigments for color. Thanks to our thoughtful, environmentally friendly formula, Real Milk Paint is free of nasty volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) linked to immune system damage and impaired organ function. Use it inside to complete your project and you won’t even have to crack a window.

Great for Your Kids, Great for the Planet

Our paint comes from the earth and can go right back to it — literally. If you have leftover paint, you can dump it in your backyard or onto your compost pile and it’ll be broken down and absorbed as part of nature’s innate disposal system.

In fact, our paint goes one step further, actively benefiting the air around us. One of the main ingredients in Real Milk Paint is high-calcium pharmaceutical-grade lime that hardens by absorbing carbon dioxide. The more you work with Real Milk Paint, the more you’re helping to offset carbon emissions.

If you’re interested in other all-natural products to add to your DIY kit, check out our Pure Tung Oil, sourced from the tung nut, and our Natural Citrus Solvent, which gets its power from the oil found in orange peels.

Perfect for Wooden Toys

In addition to being child-safe, Real Milk Paint adheres particularly well to wood. The paint has a lovely consistency and spreads easily over the project at hand, so you get a beautiful finish on everything from a handmade desk to a farm animal puzzle and all kinds of charming toys in between. For the sake of longevity, pair your chosen shade of paint with a layer of tung or hemp oil to prevent color bleeding and keep water rings and stains at bay.

To Seal or Not to Seal

While Real Milk Paint offers long-term durability on wood, its porous formulation sometimes absorbs stains and sheds loose pigments. For these reasons, sealing items embellished with Real Milk Paint often proves a good idea, especially when those items are meant for kids. Sealing painted toys and blocks makes them easier to clean and provides added peace of mind should children decide to put those belongings in their mouths. Fortunately, The Real Milk Paint Co. offers several child-safe options for sealing milk paint and locking it into wooden toys and blocks.

Pure Tung Oil

A hard-drying wood oil designed to provide an enduring matte finish, Pure Tung Oil also boasts FDA approval for food contact, ensuring its suitability for use on everything from kids’ toys and blocks to kitchen cutting boards and butcher blocks. It resists marring to keep treated items looking great for the long haul, and it penetrates wood well to protect surfaces covered in Real Milk Paint.

Other advantages to Pure Tung Oil include a formulation that uses natural ingredients and no volatile organic compounds (VOCs), making it a sustainable and eco-friendly way to seal belongings with a naturally polymerizing finish. Be aware that the slight amber hue might change Real Milk Paint colors, so test accordingly on smaller areas to achieve the results you desire. Typically, an oil finish makes colors deeper and more saturated. Lighter tones can take on a slight amber color of the tung oil.

Half & Half Oil

Half & Half oil is a blended formulation of half Pure Tung Oil and half all-natural food-grade thinner, Citrus Solvent. Since Pure Tung Oil on its own is extremely thick, the Half & Half oil blend often penetrates deeper into certain woods without requiring additional thinner. The slight amber hue imbued by the Pure Tung Oil in the formulation has the potential to change the color of Real Milk Paint, so do a spot test to ensure the hue works for you.

This fuss-free formulation comes in several sizes, depending on the needs of your project. A pint covers up to 50 square feet, and quart and gallon containers cover 100 and 400 square feet respectively. The coverage capacity and premixed design with all-natural ingredients make Half & Half oil a child-safe, economical choice for finishing handmade wood toys and blocks painted with Real Milk Paint.

Hemp Oil

Hemp Oil from The Real Milk Paint Co. offers multiple benefits for use in sealing kids’ toys and blocks. It has a hypoallergenic formulation that’s safe for food contact, making it a great choice for those with sensitivities, and it has a naturally thin viscosity, so it penetrates porous woods well without the need for extra thinning with solvents.

Additionally, Hemp Oil works on numerous surfaces from bare wood and wood with old finishes to items covered in Real Milk Paint. It leaves behind an extremely low-sheen matte finish to preserve handmade items without adding gloss. Keep in mind, however, that finishing items with Hemp Oil can gray out Real Milk Paint colors, so be sure to test items before all-over application.

Wood Wax

Wood Wax from The Real Milk Paint Co. also works well for sealing children’s toys and blocks covered with Real Milk Paint. The environmentally friendly formulation contains no VOCs, has low odor, and is food contact safe, allowing for easy application even in enclosed spaces. This walnut oil and carnauba wax formulation completely cures offering excellent protection that can be washed for added peace of mind. This finish will darken the color of the milk paint and add a smooth, lustrous sheen. A favorite among many toy makers!

You may not be able to control the harmful toxins and hidden chemicals already present in the air you breathe and the soil your kids play in, but you can keep their toys safe by choosing to craft with CPSC-compliant non-toxic paint for babies from Real Milk Paint.

Making Baby & Kids Toys For sale?

If you make baby and kid’s toys for sale and wish to use Real Milk Paint we recommend purchasing the Real Milk Paint CPSC Test Report. This document is necessary to show as proof your products are in compliance with the US Consumer Product Safety Commission’s requirements.