Whitewashing in Greece

Houses in Greece are traditionally covered with a layer of plaster (Sovas in Greek). This layer is made out of calcium carbonate or lime stone. This plaster is regularly maintained by whitewashing by the same material. Now calcium carbonate is very bright white, so bright indeed that under the bright summer Greek sun can give you a headache. So people add a bit of blue color in the whitewash to "break" the brightness. So there is aways blue in the whitewash even if it looks white to you, and by adding more blue you can have nice white blue designs.

Why blue? and not green or yellow? Well actually there are green, yellow, red even purple. People were using what ever color they could find.
But blue was the most common because long time ago there was a cleaning agent called "loulaki" literally "lilac" that had that distinctive blue color. It had the texture of a toilet tablet and people were using it for washing clothes and every house had some.

So you get your bucket of white wash, you drop one, two, or three tablets of "loulaki" and away you go....

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