Recommend me your front door paints please-Similar to Farrow and Ball Railings

[cathyandclaire]

Sooo... wanting my front door repainting and love F&B Railings but the decorator says he won't touch their exterior eggshell, water based, no end of problems..etc etc.
I'm hesitant to get it mixed up as last time the paint was the wrong shade and I ended up buying twice.
So if you have a lovely dark grey/off black satin finished front door what paint did you use?

Sorry for rudeness

Get it colour matched by Little Greene. Their F&B colour matches are spot on (unlike the other companies I tried). And they do oil based eggshell.

Thanks...didn't even know they did colour matches!
That's brilliant

Their colour matches aren't any cheaper than using actual F&B - most people do colour matching to save money I think so I guess it's not a well known/well used service!

By the way, do get a tester made up first just to check you are happy with the colour match... the match was very good on ours but might be different with a darker colour I guess!

We had a similar (expensive) problem getting paint colour matched and finding it looked nothing like the original colour - also with F&B's Railings. Apparently the machine doesn't scan dark colours very well. In the end we went for Little Greene's Basalt, but I'm not that keen. It's a very dark blue on the door, whereas Railings is greener toned. I think Little Greene are now doing a much bigger range of greys - might be worth looking into that?

Sanderson is also worth a look - they do oil based eggshell and a huge range of colours. Paint & paper library also do oil based eggshell, their colours are mainly neutrals but there might be a few darks in there.

hi there, we've just painted our entire house with Johnstones paint from www.johnstonestrade.com/store-finder.aspx which we matched from the F&B colour chart. If you look at the F&B chart each of their colours has a number. This is a universal number and is not unique to F&B. If you have a Johnstones near you go in and they will just enter this code into their mixer and voila, the exact mix is done for you. The quality is far superior than F&B's.
They do every finish possible. I would never ever buy the F&B brand again.

I don't rate F&B interior eggshell at all, but my front door is painted in F&B exterior eggshell in Railings and it's been fine - it faces west so gets sun in the afternoon. No fading during our lovely summer last year. I've had loads of positive comments about the colour.

Common misconception that water based exterior eggshells don't work. Oil is just a carrier for the other ingredients which manufacturers such as f&b replace with water. It is the quality of the resin in paint that provides durability not the oil.

Should add I had a colour matched john stones oil based paint on my exterior which lasted less than 4 years.

I have F and B Railings on the front door and the front gates in exterior eggshell and have had no problems with it. If you want Railings, I'd say get Railings.....!

Have also had lots of positive comments (including someone knocking on the door to ask what it was!) Think it's been on 5 or 6 years now.

We had F&B Railings on our south facing front door for years. Lovely. About 5 years on we decided to sell and therefore spruce up the front of the house. As we were selling we didn't want to spend the cash on F&B so had Railings colour matched (Johnstones) instead - it looked pants to be honest. F&B was SO much better - both depth of colour and finish-wise. Oh and now I think about it, before Railings we had Dulux Weathershield on the door that only lasted about 2 years. Don't write off F&B exterior paint.