Farrow & Ball - worth it?

[Noimaginationforaun]

Is Farrow and Ball worth the price point or is it better to just colour match a colour if you particularly love it? I’ve bought a couple of their books and I’m really loving them as I’m pretty clueless about where to start!

DH and I have just moved into our forever home with our LO. Our last house was very much a doer-upper. We did what we could with a very limited budget and we also knew we were going to move. Basically, we never decorated for us and more for what was on offer/what is neutral to be pleasant enough.

Anyway, now we are in our forever home and have been lucky enough to have some equity and inheritance behind us. For the first time ever, we want to actually take our time decorating and decorate for us and not just because we need everything doing as quick and as cheap as possible but equally we don’t want to waste money when it’s not worth it! We are trying to go with a ‘happy to spend the money when it’s for something that’s actually going to last’ kind of mindset!

I gave into the hype and got Wimborne White for a room. Won’t be repeating it , it doesn’t change colour with the changing light anymore than other paint does (maybe time to book an eye test). It is marking a lot and also a friend worked there and they weren’t great employers.

I know I sound like that person but earthborn is just greenwashing, it’s still made with non-permeable stuff and people buy it thinking it’s basically ‘limewash but pretty colours’. It ain’t.

For me, not a full on lime maniac, a decent matte vs earthborn I’m not going to stress about, I’ll take the matte. If I want proper vapour permeability, it’s only limewash, distemper, clay, there’s a high tech thing I forget the name of that people seem to like, think it’s made of graphene… that’s about it. Personally I’d only go lime if I was going down that road.

What do people think of colour matching the F&B colour, using it as the base coat and painting with the F&B version over that?

I’m evangelical about Little Greene having used that and Dulux extensively. LG gives a lovely chalky finish and it smells less chemically than Dulux. It’s also lower in vocs so healthier

I've done quite a bit of decorating over the years, and I will never use anything other than Little Greene or Mylands. Colours are great, nice thick creamy paint, goes on really well. Where I have used Mylands on woodwork, I've waxed it for extra protection/durability

@catlady2222 if you don’t mine me asking can you remember how much it was roughly? Going to need 2 of the 5L tins for my hallway and landing and am going to take your tip for the colour matching, I’d like it in F&B elephants breath

F&B prices have rocketed in recent years, so I go for Johnstone’s trade colour match in their trade acrylic durable matte these days, which is a v hard wearing, scrubbable finish. Goes on well, looks good and copes well with daily life. I have the F&B version of the colour elsewhere in the house in their estate emulsion (lovely finish but very difficult to live with). The colour match & finish are not absolutely identical but are extremely close, you wouldn’t know it unless you tried to use a colour match pot as a touch up on the F&B version. Though F&B doesn’t touch up well anyway, as PP have said.

My bedroom is F&B, and I love it. I love the finish, and I love the fact that the colour seems to change ever so slightly depending on the light. I found it very easy to deal with, but I did also fork out for the undercoat - so I would say it's expensive, but worth it.

Little Greene - if you can afford it. Goes on like double cream and I have found it very robust - lasts a lot longer than anything else I have tried

@BlueMongoose good info, thanks. Hard to know what’s what in our house, it’s like Pandora’s box of revamp

My decorator says it’s very poor quality paint and that crown is much better quality.

Is Little Greene any good for an old house with lime plaster walls please experts on here?

Depends how much you want to benefit from their limeyness!

Lime allows moisture to evaporate through it - modern plaster doesn’t. If you whack a bunch of vinyl silk paint over it, you lose a lot of that ‘breathability’, which could in theory mean your walls, if they get damp, can’t dry as easily. If that’s not a problem for you, and/or they’re internal walls between rooms, crack on with painting them with whatever you want (though I personally would think it was a shame).

limewash or distemper would keep the full permeability.

most matte paints do allow some moisture through, which is a good thing. There’s a rating for it, SD or something, and you want that to be around 0.1 or below. little greenes is I think 0.13. Earthborn and similar types of things are also fine.

So, short answer, paint over lime with whatever you want if you’re only concerned about whether it goes on the wall or not. Longer answer - limewash or distemper is ‘best’ but matte paint is I think a fine compromise. But plenty would disagree with me!

know quite a few interior decorators - every single one says colour match and use leyland paint x