Farrow and Ball - is it easy to use?

[soupdragon321]

Am planning on paining kitchen/dining room. Very large area. Looking at Strong white by F&B. Will be painting it ourselves to save on costs. Walls have had a mist coat of white emulsion. Is F&B modern emulsion easy to use? Have heard so many mixed reviews. Or should we get the colour mixed up in, say, crown extreme clean? Would be cheaper and more hard wearing, but will it be easy to apply?

I love modern emulsion. Extremely hard wearing and easy to apply. I love it.

Our dining room is modern emulsion, been painted for about 8 years. Never touched up. Wiped down and is as good as new. It takes a hammering as it's the thoroughfare to garden. I've also used it in my hallway & stairs. Perfect.

I won't use anything else now.

I personally find F&B paint much nicer to work with, it applies beautifully and doesn’t leave a smell. Our painter/decorator also said it’s his fav paint.

Get it colour matched at a dulux centre, using their heritage paint. It's half the price and a dream to paint with! Perfect match, too.

Living and edge ware, did you use a primer at all or just whacked it on the walls with a roller? I’m getting such different opinions about this paint, it’s bizarre! I got a colour match in Leland this morning, just to see as they have a tough scrubbable finish paint, but the match was nothing like FB Strong White, so am tempted to go for the original, but don’t want to have to prime the walks first or do four coats of F& B!

Little Greene has far, far better coverage with same quality of pigments. Mylamd is also excellent.

@Lonecatwithkitten

Little Greene has far, far better coverage with same quality of pigments. Mylamd is also excellent.

Agree, also you don’t have the shiny finish with L&G or Mylands both are very hardwearing & you can scrub them.

We paint ourselves and F&B is absolutely fine-we use all the premium paints and they’re all good. F&B doesn’t smell. We don’t colour match as in the scheme of things and not paying for a decorator or wallpaper, it’s not horrendously expensive.

You have to be very careful with colour matches since they tend to match to their nearest colour. Some will therefore be pretty close. Others will be way off and neither is likely to give you the sand undertones.

Five if you’re doing a whole room. Not five if you’re trying to patch in.

fine!!

Seconding Little Greene. Especially if you’re doing woodwork too – have a perfect finish on doors using LG; we used F&B for our fire surround as it had a particular colour I wanted, and it was horribly drippy and gloopy

I colour matched at Dulux Decorator Centre after running out of FB paint. The colour is identical, the price is very similar too.

But I do very much agree that Dulux had a far far better coverage, even after using two coats of FB primer on an almost white bluish white I was trying to cover with Pointing.

I do love farrow and ball (their modern emulsion is amazing). But the absolute winner is Craig and Rose, the coverage is a dream, it's actually a joy to paint with.

I like the F&B emulsion paints but find the woodwork paint difficult to use. It seems to dry as you’re painting so you need to be very quick or get brush-strokes.

I get the B & Q valspar paint for woodwork. They have all the F&B paints stored in their mixing machines. Just a word of caution though they don’t match F&B exactly so are OK to use on their own but not if you’re painting something adjacent to the F&B colour.

Having just had painted three bedrooms with Teresa Green estate emulsion as liked the sound of the finish - chalky no sheen - the colour is stunning but my god I’m already having the painter back to repaint several walls as it marks so easily wish I’d gone for something else - even a slight touch with a finger will leave a unremovable mark - we will be wearing gloves in the house at this rate ! was only painted last month ..

We painted out kitchen f&b strong white (mod emul) in the summer. My husband did it and said it went on really well. Mist if our house is f&b and he says some colours better than others. I love the colour. Also have in one of our bathrooms. The paint has been very durable in both bathroom and kitchen

F&B is emperors new clothes paint. Every decorator I know says so. They use it because customers want them to but you can get better quality paint for a better price.

@Lonecatwithkitten

Little Greene has far, far better coverage with same quality of pigments. Mylamd is also excellent.

I have found the complete opposite of this!

Farrow and Ball great coverage, only needed two coats, beautiful finish and easy to work with. Little Greene had awful coverage, needed three coats, was almost impossible to apply without streaks and didn''t touch up at all well. Nice colours and finish though.

Zoffany is my current favourite, like painting with velvet.

Thanks everyone. Gosh it’s crazy isn’t it. I’ve spoken with soooooo many people, including professional decorators and the opinions are so mixed. I’ve had F&B Strong White colour matched in Johnstones, Leyland and Tikkurilla and none of them were a match. I’ve had people say F&B is terrible and others saying it’s lovely. It’s nuts! DH says we should just go for the F&B and if we need to repaint it later then so be it as we’ll be saving on decorating costs as we’re doing it ourselves. We would be going for Modern Emulsion

Little Greene is good. I recommend a paint catalog or a sample etc beforehand. You can even talk to a employee on Facebook or on their website too.

Personally I do a lot of painting and I have only used F&B once and it was awful. I think it can be very hit and miss.

It took 11 coats of paint to paint my living room because the paint was like milk.
It cost a fortune and months later when I was wiping the walk to get a mark off, the paint came off on my damp cloth.
I have heard it can also be very thick and difficult to work with.

My advice if you want to use F&B is go and get the paint colour you want matched up at B&Q and either give it a final coat with F&B to get the finish or just get the super Matt finish paint when having it colour matched.

We used FnB recently for the first time.

No issues other than when we peeled the masking off, some bits of paint came of too. Not much, just had to re touch a few inches...

Worth it for the amazing tone and finish.

So much better than dulux trade!

Make sure you have seen your chosen paint on a wall in Modern Emulsion. The tester pots are Estate Emulsion (2% sheen) but Modern Emulsion has 7% sheen and gives a completely different finish. I only have one room painted in F&B because I couldn't find a comparable colour and it has a definite glowy sheen which I quite like, but which is most definitely not the chalky matt that F&B market themselves with.

I'm another fan of Little Greene: their Intelligent Matt is max 5% sheen and noticeably matter and more pigmented than F&B Modern.

We have Modern Emulsion in our living room. Lovely colour but I’m not a fan. It is not compatible with Blu tak (!) but we also have several chips of paint missing which have never been anywhere near Blu—tak. I got the impression it would be quite robust but not the case at all. We only did it three years ago.

We have the estate emulsion in our bedroom and that’s worn really well - but it is a lower traffic area. We had what I think was estate emulsion in our hall and that did not wear well at all (chipped and scuffed massively in three years).

I would personally stick with Dulux for a high traffic area like a kitchen.

What’s the decorator choice?

Best paint I’ve ever used for coverage and durability is Sioux trade emulsion.

Dulux !!