THE COGNITIVE BENEFITS OF WHITEBOARD WALLS

 

Writing and drawing on whiteboard walls has many beneficial effects on the brain. These impacts can be leveraged in the business office, the classroom, the home, and other settings. Studies have shown that writing by hand has a number of positive effects on both cognitive and physical health. These effects are amplified when you do the writing on a large, easy-to-use vertical surface like a whiteboard wall. The following article offers suggestions on using whiteboard walls to obtain the most significant advantages for you and your colleagues or students’ mental, emotional, and physical well-being.

Enhanced Memory Retention

Writing is a highly practical tool for boosting our cognitive faculties. Many studies have shown links between writing and mental abilities such as memory, critical thinking, and creativity. Writing and drawing on whiteboard walls are beneficial for activating and improving our visual and motor memory. They enhance the recall and understanding of complex concepts. Memory retention is the ability to store and remember information or experiences over time. It’s the process of recovering data after it’s been programmed and stored in our brains. 

However, memory retention may decline sooner or later, a process known as forgetting. Research shows that people can retain the knowledge gained through formal and informal education for long periods, with an initial phase of forgetting followed by lasting retention. 

The following are some ways you can positively impact lasting memory retention:

• Doing motivational activities
• Establishing a goal-setting scheme
• Practicing personalized learning methods
• Employing creative teaching techniques
• Making effective use of educational resources
• Exploiting constructive learning tools. 

To help in using these tactics, whiteboard walls can be your go-to communication resource in the office, school, or home setting. They’re highly useful for creating activities to motivate office staff, household members, and students. They’re also perfect tools for setting goals and doing personalized learning, which is especially beneficial for homeschoolers.

Improved Creativity with Whiteboard Walls

The expansive, readily erasable vertical surfaces of whiteboard walls encourage non-stop, free-form thinking and rapid brainstorming. These, in turn, lead you and your students or team members to come up with more novel ideas and solutions than would be possible through typing on a computer or laptop.

It’s typical for office team members, learners, and others to work solely on horizontal surfaces like desks or tables all day. However, this practice normally involves sitting for long periods with minimal arm, hand, and upper-body movement. As such, it can be detrimental to developing fine motor and cognitive skills in children and to maintaining these skills in adults.

On the other hand, writing and drawing on large vertical surfaces like whiteboard walls require continuous broad movements of the torso and arms. These actions boost strength and flexibility in the joints and muscles of the trunk and upper extremities. They also stimulate blood flow to the brain, thus enhancing creative ideation and overall cognitive capacity.

Moreover, adding a bit of aesthetic appeal can give people that extra boost in engagement and creativity that teachers and managers seek. When you offer students or team members the creative possibility of using colored markers and erasing them immediately, they can use their own style and have fun with their work assignments. Employing whiteboard walls in the classroom and business office leads to increased creativity in both students and staff members. This is so because the walls offer a modifiable visual platform where people may connect their individual thoughts, images, and presentation styles to the structured concepts taught in class or dealt with in company projects.

Improved User Engagement and Collaboration

Whiteboard walls also facilitate group interaction and discussion, thus promoting better teamwork, collective problem-solving, and enhanced cognitive ability. When groups of team members or students work collaboratively on whiteboard walls, the joint effort stimulates their brains. This stimulation, in turn, enhances their memories and ability to understand large amounts of information at one time.

Physical aging is accompanied by a host of changes in a person’s cognitive faculties, ultimately affecting learning and memory retention. However, by reversing some of these typical age-related developments, learning collaboratively may benefit adults of various age levels. Using whiteboard walls is an ideal way to gain and exchange information in group settings. Whiteboard walls’ open-ended, inviting surfaces inspire users to record streams of ideas and images freely. This consequently triggers the brain to think more clearly and creatively in any subject area, from math to music to marketing.

Reduced Stress With Whiteboard Walls

Writing or drawing on whiteboard walls can also have a calming, centering effect on the brain. This reduces stress and promotes clearer thinking and a more tranquil classroom, home, or office environment. For creative writers, for those who write content for websites, and for others, the relaxing effect of using whiteboard walls can also improve the quality of their output. This occurs because writing by hand makes people more reflective and careful about word choice, sentence structure, and spelling than they would be if typing on a computer or laptop.

Moreover, unlike these digital devices, whiteboard walls are uncomplicated single-purpose tools. As such, they can help you focus solely on writing and avoid distractions like the urge to surf the web or send emails. This situation can also reduce stress as you’re less prone to feel guilty about avoiding work and engaging in unnecessary activities that your boss might notice in due time.

Enhanced Problem-Solving Skills

Visually mapping out problems on whiteboard walls helps break down complex subject matter, making it easier for you and others to develop solutions and strategies. In addition to designing structured maps or diagrams to enhance problem-solving, informal, open-ended doodling and drawing on whiteboard walls also develop problem-solving skills. Since doodling and drawing dynamically engage the brain, they are ideal for bringing embryonic solutions up to the surface to be considered by a group.  

Problem-solving through doodling or drawing on the vast vertical surface of a whiteboard wall makes thoughts visible to everyone in the office or classroom. So, using a whiteboard wall instead of a table or desk for these tasks avoids blocking new insights from others’ views. Instead, it shares them openly with the group so that problem-solving becomes more collaborative and thus more manageable.

On a related note, a recent study showed that students’ neural activity was greatly stimulated when they wrote words by hand as opposed to studying texts visually. This close connection between handwriting and increased brain activity demonstrates that problem-solving is much more straightforward when the hands explore solutions and externalize new options. 

Better Organization and Planning

Using whiteboard walls to generate to-do lists, work schedules, and project timelines improves both personal and group organization and time management. This, in turn, leads to clearer thinking, enhanced cognitive facility, and more efficient workflow in the office, home, or classroom. Creating lists can also help decrease stress and anxiety, feel less overwhelmed, and be more in control of daily affairs.

Encouragement of Physical Activity

Engaging in physical activity, such as standing and moving around while utilizing whiteboard walls, has been shown to have numerous positive effects on the body and mind. This includes enhancing blood circulation, increasing heart rate, boosting energy levels, and improving overall health. Additionally, the act of handwriting has been found to stimulate more complex connections within the brain compared to typing, making it especially advantageous for cognitive functions, learning, and memory retention.

A recent study from Norway using EEGs showed that when the research subjects engaged in the physical act of writing by hand, their brain connectivity patterns were far more elaborate than when they typed on a keyboard. Such extensive brain connectivity is known to be vital for enhancing memory retention and for encoding new information. Thus, writing by hand is highly beneficial for learning at all age levels, especially when done on the vast vertical surfaces of whiteboard walls.

 

HOW LONG DOES THE WHITEBOARD PAINT ON A WALL TYPICALLY LAST?

 

When you decide to buy whiteboard paint to increase the functional capabilities of your office or classroom walls, you’re making an excellent investment. With whiteboard paint, you can transform any smooth surface into a writable area of any size you like, thus enhancing team members’, students’, or family members’ creativity and ability to communicate and collaborate in countless ways through writing and drawing by hand.

Once you decide on the type of functionality you’re looking for in a whiteboard paint product, the next step is to buy some paint. However, it would be best if you considered key factors before choosing a specific brand. One of the major considerations is how long the coating will last and remain attractive and functional with regular use and maintenance. Please continue reading to learn more about some of the important issues related to whiteboard paint’s durability that you should address before making a purchase, along with the answers you’ll need to know about our top-quality products.

Introduction to Whiteboard Paint

Despite its common name, whiteboard paint is a type of coating that comes in either a one- or two-part formula and may be applied to any smooth, clean paintable material, such as drywall, plaster, metal, wood, or tile. Some whiteboard paint products, such as our top-quality coating, are ready to use within two days of being applied, though others may require up to a week of drying time to get the optimal results. Whiteboard paint typically comes in both clear and white versions. If you want to create a white dry-erase writing board, you can use white whiteboard paint over a white or light-colored substrate.

If you’d prefer a colored writing board, you may use a clear version of whiteboard paint over a substrate that had previously been painted in a light color, such as yellow, pink, chartreuse, or pastel blue. Most brands of whiteboard paint work best as writable coatings when applied over satin or semi-gloss latex paint. Whatever type of whiteboard paint you choose to apply in your space, a high level of durability is a crucial quality to look for if you plan to write and draw on the coated surface for a long period of time.

Factors Affecting Whiteboard Paint’s Longevity

Many factors have an impact on a whiteboard paint brand’s durability or longevity, including the following:

• The quality control standards of the company that makes the paint
• The extent of surface preparation you do before applying the paint
• How you use the coated surface and how often you use it (e.g., every day in a classroom or business office vs. occasional use in the home).

Other factors related to whiteboard paint that affect its durability are your application technique, the local environmental conditions, how regularly you maintain the painted surface, and the quality and type of ingredients used in the formulation.

When it comes to type and quality of ingredients, our premium whiteboard paint products are unsurpassed. Due to their exceptional chemical formulation and the rigid quality control standards we apply during and after production, the coatings can last ten or more years of continuous normal use if cleaned and maintained regularly. To back up this claim, top-quality whiteboard paint comes with a ten-year warranty against yellowing, cracking, and peeling.

Expected Lifespan of Whiteboard Paint

By contrast, many whiteboard paints on the market today typically last only a short time before needing to be replaced. These products include several epoxy-based whiteboard paints, which contain chemical compounds that cause them to begin to yellow in as little as a few days.  Direct or indirect exposure to ultraviolet UV radiation from the sun or artificial lighting can accelerate these paints’ yellowing process, which involves a photochemical reaction that degrades the polymers in the epoxy resin. 

Epoxies contain so-called aromatic compounds and are not light stable. Light stability can be improved with the addition of certain ingredients, such as silicones. Still, it will never achieve the same level of resistance to yellowing that high-quality ReMARKable coatings possess. Silicone-based epoxies may have better UV light resistance than others, but they are extremely expensive. When epoxies are exposed to UV radiation, after the yellowing process begins, the paints start to appear chalky and break down chemically; in due course, this leads to cracking, failure of the coated surface, and the need for replacement.

This is not the case with our premium quality water-based whiteboard paint, which is not affected by UV light exposure and resists yellowing over its entire lifespan. In addition, top-quality ReMARKable paint possesses great flexibility and won’t crack, peel or delaminate when exposed to severe vibrations or heavy daily use. So, when properly applied, the coating is designed to remain functional, attractive, and trouble-free even under harsh or corrosive conditions such as those in a factory, restaurant, or farm building.

Signs of Wear and Tear

Common indicators that whiteboard paint is starting to wear or needing to be replaced include the following:

• Issues with the erasability of the surface
• The beginning stages of cracking and peeling
• Issues with the legibility of writing done on the surface
• A tendency for written content to smudge or smear when erased
• The presence of “ghosting” or remnants of written text or drawings being left behind on the surface after it’s been erased.

These problems can all be avoided if you install top-quality whiteboard paint in your office, school, hospital, home, or other venue. When premium whiteboard paint is your coating of choice, text and drawings will always be easy to see and erased cleanly without smudging or ghosting, and the surface can be reused continuously for many trouble-free years under normal conditions.

Also, as mentioned above, premium whiteboard paint is accompanied by a ten-year warranty against yellowing, cracking, and peeling, so these issues will never arise with regular use and maintenance of your whiteboard painted surface.

Extending the Lifespan of Whiteboard Paint

Keeping to a regular cleaning and maintenance routine is essential to improving the usefulness and appearance of surfaces coated with top-quality whiteboard paint. When you adhere to this practice, your whiteboard painted wall or other surface will remain pristine, resilient, and functional for the entire lifetime of the coating.

Surfaces covered with whiteboard paint are easiest to write on and erase when you use only eco-friendly low-odor dry erase markers for writing and drawing, and a microfiber cloth or mitt for erasing. Also, when necessary, it’s recommended that you occasionally use a good-quality, eco-friendly whiteboard cleaner to maintain your surface in the most spotless and useful condition possible. You might use denatured alcohol for cleaning if a water-based whiteboard cleaner is not available. Squirt a small amount of the cleaner or alcohol on any stained areas you notice and wipe the surface down with the microfiber cloth or mitt. Then thoroughly dry the surface with another microfiber cloth, and you’ll be ready to write and draw to your heart’s content.

While premium whiteboard paint is exceptionally hard-wearing and easy to write on and erase, periodic cleaning with an eco-friendly whiteboard cleaner will help to keep your surfaces immaculate and easy to use during their entire lifetime of ten or more years.

It’s also important that you use compatible dry-erase markers with your whiteboard painted surface. As mentioned, these should be high-grade, low-odor markers, which are available at most office supply and department stores or online. Doing so will ensure that your writing and drawing are easy to see even from a distance and that you receive consistent color quality.

Concluding remarks

If you take note of the key points about whiteboard paint’s durability discussed in this article, you can be assured that applying the paint to your walls or other surfaces will meet or exceed your expectations and prove to be a sound investment of your time and money for many years to come.