Period character guide: Lime building materials

Lime is the key to healthy period homes, whether in the form of mortar, plaster or wash. Roger Hunt explores lime’s history as a building material and assesses the benefits it brings to old houses.

The first time I used lime mortar was a revelation. That moment confirmed for me how easy it is to use lime-based materials and their importance when repairing old buildings. Lime mortars, renders and plasters have a different consistency to their modern cement-based counterparts, while limewash is quite unlike today’s ‘plastic’ paints. This is because lime produces soft textures, and mellow colours when mixed with natural earth pigments. Most important of all, it’s porous so allows a wall to breathe and shed moisture, thus avoiding damp.