Environmental protection is one of the unavoidable topics in today's coatings industry. Against this background, environmentally friendly coatings have grown rapidly and have gradually become the mainstream of development in the coatings field. Water-based coatings are an area where environmental-friendly coatings are developing rapidly. At present, many mature products and technologies have been introduced to the market. Water-based coatings are water-based solvents or dispersion media. They are green and environmentally friendly. The field has been used on a larger scale. As countries around the world pay more and more attention to environmental protection, the use of water-based coatings has become an inevitable trend.

Since the advent of the 1960s, water-based coatings have developed over the years, and have formed a huge system of multiple varieties, multiple functions, multiple uses, and multiple specifications. Although China's water-based coatings industry started late, with the rapid economic development, water-based coatings have made great progress, and the water-based coating of wood coatings for furniture and office coatings has a clear trend. Despite the great success of water-based coatings, there is still a long way to go to completely replace other types of coatings.

At the same time, the development of the coatings industry is inseparable from standard specifications and guidance. A few days ago, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on Announcing the List of Group Standard Application Demonstration Projects in 2018" (Ministry of Industry and Information Technology Kehan ​​(2018) No. 469), and the "Technical Specification for Evaluation of Green Design Products Based on Water Architectural Coatings was included in the "Group Standard Application Demonstration Project" in 2018. "Technical Specifications for the Evaluation of Green Design Products for Waterborne Architectural Coatings", as the technical specifications for the evaluation of green design products in the coatings industry, is of great significance to standardize and guide the development of the coatings industry. It is conducive to boosting the social influence of green product policies, enhancing social effects, and can further promote brand building, guide consumption, and meet the requirements of industrial structural transformation and supply-side structural reform. A series of coating industry standards have been implemented one after another to promote the transformation process of the coating industry. It is believed that as the government attaches more and more importance to environmental protection and the paint industry standards are becoming more and more perfect, coating companies will also accelerate the pace of transformation and upgrading and contribute to the cause of environmental protection.

In addition to formulating standards and carrying out research work in the future, we must also actively develop green, sustainable, and developmental coating coating technology, and continue to broaden the application areas of water-based coatings to further release the market potential of water-based coatings. At the same time, on the basis of existing strengths and avoid weaknesses, develop high-performance, high-functional water-based coatings. In general, water-based coatings are one of the important development trends in the coatings industry, and the prospects are very broad. But to play a greater role, we also need to work hard on performance and replace non-environmental-friendly coatings from the root.