I have started chatting to someone and they have informed me they have always wanted to be covered in paint from head to toe. As someone that has never used paint as a substance before, is there anything I need to be aware of? Paints to avoid etc. Can you pour it over someone? Have them head dunk etc? Any advice/ideas would be greatly appreciated!

I can only speak from working with metallic mehron powder. It can be mixed with baby oil or coconut oil. Completely safe to use, it just might be a bit irritating in the eyes

Never use oil-based paint, as it requires turpentine or other strong solvent to dissolve.

Most of today's paints are latex though. (water-based) Even still, some colors use strong chemical pigments and there is a risk of some toxicity using paint.

Children's poster paint is also water-based and much safer, but only is readily available in small bottles.

If you're wanting to use house paint (latex) be sure to go with a light color, which will use less pigments. Also, never let any of it dry, as once the water evaporates, the paint is 'set' and will be very hard to remove. This could be a very little area in the hair or on furniture or clothing. But, as long as it stays wet, it can be washed out.

Years back Messy Fun released a series of amateur wam videos, mostly mud but there was a paint series too, women in dresses covering each other in house interior (emulsion) paint. And they didn't skimp on quantity, they poured whole tins of it over each other, I remember one of the women, who'd bent down to scoop up some more paint in a cup, having a full can poured over her bottom and down the back of her dress, loudly proclaiming "I can't believe you did that", but staying in exactly the same position so the woman doing the pouring could empty the entire can over her before she stood up again to exact her revenge. I have it as a download from circa 2002, it's a .ra file and the size of a postage stamp on a modern 4k screen, but still great fun to watch.

I rember Rob's advice at the time that wall (emulsion, water-based) paint was fine, just avoid gloss, which was oil based. I see house paint now comes with dire warnings, but to be honest so does almost anything that isn't actually food (and even that comes with allergy warnings) so I'd be inclined to ignore them, just make sure to wash all of the paint off carefully once finished playing.