Silicate paint turns to stone with the wall.

An organic facade paint — acrylic, for example — bonds to the wall by adhesion: a polymer film lies on top of the surface and holds on. Sun, heat, and the wet-dry cycle eventually break that bond, and the film chalks, fades, and peels. A silicate paint bonds by chemistry instead. The potassium-silicate binder reacts with the mineral surface, forming an insoluble crystalline network that is continuous with the substrate — the paint silicifies into the wall. There is no separate film to lose adhesion, because there is no separate film.

Because the binder is inorganic and the pigments are mineral, ultraviolet light has nothing organic to degrade. Silicate facades hold their colour for decades and do not chalk; the surface ages by gentle erosion rather than by film failure. The same inorganic chemistry makes the coating non-combustible — there is no plastic film to burn.

The cured surface remains highly vapour-permeable, with an Sd value around 0.01 m on the ProfiSol topcoat. Moisture that reaches the wall can leave through the coating rather than building up behind it, so the freeze-thaw and monsoon stresses that blister film paints have far less to act on. Durability, colour stability, and breathability all come from the one decision to bind with silicate rather than polymer.

Few climates test an exterior wall paint as hard as India’s: tropical UV well above European norms, three months of monsoon saturation, and a dry season that pulls the moisture back out. Organic facade paints fade, chalk, and peel quickly under that load, which is why so many Indian buildings are on a short repaint cycle. A silicate paint answers each stress directly — the mineral binder and mineral pigment shrug off UV, and the vapour-permeable surface lets the wall dry instead of blistering.

Two LEINOS lines cover the two real-world starting points. ProfiSol (612/613) is the sol-silicate system for sound mineral facades — plaster, cement render, and mineral substrates — where a true silicate bond can form directly. UniverSil (614/615) is the silicate system that mineralises facades already coated in synthetic resin paint or built as WDVS/ETICS insulation systems, where a pure silicate cannot bond on its own. Between them they cover both a new mineral facade and the repaint of an existing apartment block.

Silicate paint is the exterior, mineral-facade counterpart to the interior mineral paints — clay for humidity buffering, lime for mould resistance. All three share the same principle: bind with minerals, keep the surface open-pore, and let the wall behave like the mineral it is.