Farrow and Ball

[JillJ72]

Please explain to me the virtues of Farrow and Ball paint. Have got a tester pot of a gorgeous colour for our hallway, but a bit at the price. Ultimately, if it's the right colour and finish I think we'll go for it, but in the meantime, tell me why we should have Farrow and Ball in our hallway.

Thank you

depth of colour, has more pigmentation

earth-born paints lovely too (and environmentally friendly) - similar colours and pigmentation to f and b

The colours are nice, but coverage is poor imo.

Had to use 4 coats recently in my sitting room and was wishing I'd gone for Dulux!

Looks gorge now though..

I'd agree with blowsy on coats. I use a cheap white coat (or two) first, then go for a coat of the F&B. They do have some gorgeous colours

Names are nice too. My sitting room is Dimity, chose it just because it sounds fab!

They are lovely colours and I have used them in the houses I have previously owned. I am in rented at the moment and when we decorated here we were given a tight budget by the landlady so I had the F & B colours matched by Dulux. The colours were virtually identical (better with the whiter and off white shades than the more pigmenty ones), much cheaper and my decorator loved me as the coverage was much better that F & B according to him.

Gosh, thank you! We're overhauling our new home bit by bit; we've got to smooth the walls first and then will put on some 'paint for plaster', so an undercoat if you like. I wonder if coverage would thus be better. I'll have a look at earth-born; I was also wondering whether Dulux would be willing to mix to a similar palette...

I'm a big fan of Craig & Rose but they don't do the colour/tone that we want, hence find the colour then see the price, then think about how to proceed

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LOL Cod. We were looking at Borrowed Light.

My living room is Chalk White. It's a sort of pale sale

I think their colours and mattness are nicer than any other

F&B's colours are are lovely and all that and we re-decorated most of our house using lots of their different whites and creams about 4 years ago. Have regretted it massively as the finish gets grubby really quickly and does not wipe clean. Their eco-friendly wipe-clean silk-finish stuff which we also tried is crap. The finish may be wipe-clean, but it is also streaky (known problem and F&B agents were not v. happy selling it). I'm going for stinky chemical Dulux or similar next time. F&B's outdoor paint is rubbish - it discolours really quickly. Sorry, but that's our experience.

Lots of Lime White and Green Ground in our house- lovely. Best for older houses I think where the walls aren't that perfect to begin with. Ours is Victorian and 2 coats absolutely fine.

My dining room is Farrow and Ball String, lovely!

Chosen after looking for ages for the perfect beigey-cream and then finding it on the walls of a friend's house.

Our whole flat is painted in F&B.
DD was only 6 months when we had the decorators and was worried about odours, but there was none. Until the final day when we returned home the whole flat stunk of paint ... because the decorators had run out of F&B and painted the front door with bog standard Dulux!

Mixed opinions then....! Thank you.

Love colours etc but agree with posts re poor coverage.

Weird, I've always found F&B better coverage than anyone else - a coat of anything watered down onto the fresh plaster and then 2 coats of F&B and it's perfect. We have String, Joas White, French Gray and Saxon Green in our house, they're all gorgeous. I think F&B isn't expensive ultimately as the colours are so good you don't end up buying millions of Dulux testers and then repainting when the Dulux colour just doesn't look quite right

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Our decorator complained about poor coverage and blobs in the modern emulsion version.

We painted a while room in Brinjal but then dh decided it was too dark so we had to have it all redone, in the end with a dulux colour. Odour was much greater with the dulux.