Farrow and Ball

[Nmchanger]

Hi we've just bought a house and I really like the colour of the walls. I asked the previous owner what paint it was and it's Farrow and Ball. I suggested to my husband we buy a pot in case we need to do any touch-ups and it's £100 a pot!
Is it really worth it, it seems extortionate.

So YABU - It's really worth the money, or YANBU - no you're paying for the name.

It's really good. I don't think you're just paying for the name. We've got a lot of farrow and ball in our house and our decorator ( who doesn't work for f and b or anything like that ), said it really is very good and his preferred paint.

If you know the colour, you can ask the hardware shop to mix some for you. When I had my living room painted I really liked an F&B paint and the decorator took the sample pot to B&Q and got it mixed by Johnson's. Waaaay cheaper.

Get the paint mixed! Johnstones or Dulux Diamond Matt both do great colour matches and saves a bomb. We did that for all the rooms in our house and people still come in and say “Is that wall colour X by Farrow and Ball?”

Well if you colour match it with another brand it won’t be exact so you’re not going to be able to cover little marks.
If you buy a cheaper brand you’ll probably have to do a full cost.

I would buy a pot. They change their range quite frequently so you may find the colour is discontinued by the time you want to touch up.

Why do you want to buy a pot of paint in case of touch ups? Wait until there are some that need doing and get one then. (Preferably a tester pot, if it's the same finish paint).

Also, just to add that I’m dying to try their new finish “Dead Flat” because it does sound genuinely good (scrubbable and multi surface), so maybe it would be worth it for that one. The Estate Emulsion has a famous “chalky” finish but apparently it’s a nightmare to clean so avoid for high traffic areas. In terms of the actual paint quality and application, some professional decorators seem to hate it whilst others love it! I guess it’s down to personal preference but I’m very happy with my colour matches.

Decorating centre online colour match, it's great and much cheaper!

I don't think it's worth it. I've used it here and there in our home. It's just marketed very well. After using it and not being that impressed I've gone for colour matches in B&Q. So much cheaper and great quality. There is also a website that you input the colour you want a similar match to and it gives you equivalent paint ideas https://www.e-paint.co.uk/colour-alternatives.asp

Persipan Because when we asked around people like Clymene have said they change their range frequently so I thought it would be prudent to buy a pot now.

I’ve used farrow and ball the proper stuff and love it, you can’t recreate the depth of the colour and the chalky finish. but it marks like nothing else, literal nightmare. Someone in my family sneezed too close to the wall and you can see the splatter.

I’ve used mix by other paint manufacturers based on f&b, it’s never a perfect match so DONT buy that for touch ups. But it’s good if you’re painting a whole room in a colour you like fromf&b pallett.

also - you can’t really touch up f&b, you’ll make the mark worse and have to repaint the whole wall (from experience)

I didn't think it's allowed to mix farrow and ball for cheaper?

Christ on a bike Catsonskis I'm going to be trailing after people with tissues!

The estate emulsion is £49 for a regular sized tin at B&Q, then more for the modern emulsion (more hard wearing.) they include F&B when they do 3 for 2 across paints so you could look to get some when it’s next on offer if you also plan on picking some other colours from any range for other diy jobs in your home.

We thought we treat ourselves to fancy paint but found it really horrible to use. Applied very patchy. And it wasn’t my first painting rodeo. We ended up having to colour match and repaint the whole room.

Little Greene on the other hand was lovely.

We had a colour match done (valspar) or wine dark, was nothing like it so ended up buying the f and b. Worth it in my opinion, the finish is different too. But that’s only if you love the colour.

Don’t worry about them updating their ranges. It does happen but they archive the colours rather than discontinuing them. They aren’t available in shops but you can still buy them direct from Farrow & Ball themselves.

I would say that buying a match or even a branded tin for touch ups is unlikely to work anyway as the existing paint has been on the walls for a long period. It has been exposed to sunlight and every day muck and it will be a different batch number to whichever touch up paint you buy whether it is F&B branded or a colour match. It will be patchy. You are better off repainting the whole thing if it gets to that point.

Colour matching isn’t a complete match - I have tried and I can see the difference. But it might be worth using the colour match if you like the colour which comes out!

other paints are good too. Farrow and ball colours are muted and their pigments are good. Little greene also has lovely pigments - though not such a muted range of colours.

I wouldn’t buy a pot to touch up though. Unless it was painted in the last few months, you’ll be able to tell the difference. Just wait til you have to redo the room

Surely the small pots aren't £100?

If it's just to cover scuffs then 750 ml sells pots for under £30, which is still loads but not £100.

They also seem to have some half price 2.5 litre tins for about the same price.

Not true. I rang them about the colour that my living room is painted. They do not maintain an archive of all discontinued paint for everyone who wants to touch up!

And I'm not talking 20 years ago - it was painted 6 years ago.

Paint and Paper Library have some lovely muted tones too, a huge range of colours.

I have F&B colour matches by Decorating centre online in Johnson’s acrylic durable matt, plus other specialist paint finishes, and they are very good. Much more durable than F&B for a busy household, properly scrubbable and half the price. The match is excellent, not perfect but as good as I need it to be and the finish is really nice and matt. I have genuine F&B in other parts of the house, done 7+ years ago when prices weren’t as crackers and the finish of the Johnsons is just as expensive looking.

The fact is that the base paints is am colour matching into are better quality and more suited to the jobs I need them for than f&b’s bases, so it’s not even just as case of prices. Some of the specialist bases I choose are as pricey as the equivalent f&b base but much easier to use with a much better finish.

That’s interesting, @Clymene. I wonder if you have to buy a certain amount to make it worthwhile them mixing colours from the archive?

If you know the colour, you can ask the hardware shop to mix some for you. When I had my living room painted I really liked an F&B paint and the decorator took the sample pot to B&Q and got it mixed by Johnson's. Waaaay cheaper. I think this works really well if you like a colour and want a really close match to paint your while walls with but if your walls are already painted I think it's best to actually buy the exact same for touch ups as the colour is never 100% the same

The tester pots are £5 and perfect for touch ups. They are however in estate emulsion, not modern emulsion (that we have)as I found out when retouching wall marks, the estate emulsion is more matt.

The teeny testers are about £5