Paint - Farrow & Ball

Soldato
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Right, I'm having a couple of rooms skimmed and repainted and I'm looking at paint.

Woodwork will be white Dulux eggshell, ceilings and above the picture rails in Dulux flat matt white and bedroom walls in a Dulux trade matt that we had in out last house.

The problem is the living room; four walls and the chimney breast in a feature colour. We've found the colours we want but they are Farrow & Ball. The decorator has sucked on his teeth and is pushing us towards finding something in the Dulux trade catalogue but the finish isn't even close. I'm also about F&B as it's not supposed to be very hardy and due to the way it fades I understand that touching-up isn't possible without doing the whole wall.

Young kids mean it will need touching up now and again.

So, any alternatives or recommendation?

Looking at Johnson trade Flat matt who can match or Little Greene and I don't know if they can.

Any advice?
 
Soldato
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F&B is good but you need to use their entire system to get the benefit which is expensive and time consuming - hence why you can't just touch up (well, you can, but it'll be noticable when you look for it).

Dulux is garbage by the way, go Johnstones. Dulux gave up giving a **** about the quality of their trade paints after VOC 2010 came in, the emulsion is OK at best. All the oilbased and acrylic flat/ eggshell/ satin/ gloss/ undercoat is total crap, absolute rubbish, the oilbased yellows in a matter of weeks (badly) and the acrylics are the complete opposite of durable an a complete nightmare to get a nice finish with.

Little Green are excellent though.
 
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Man of Honour
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Yes, Dulux is garbage. Can't comment on matte emulsion but we made the mistake of using their gloss without checking up first and it never completely hardens and has gone yellow within a year. We've ended up repainting. You probably ought to know there are plenty of stories on here moaning about Dulux.

Wickes paint seems to be fine. Their emulsion covers ok but is a bit more splattery than the Crown I used. Their solvent-based paint is very good too but whiffy. Overall it's a good balance between cost and coverage IMO.
 
Associate
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When we re-decorated we used:

Little Greene on walls - Get the intelligent matt as its very durable and has really good non-artificial looking colours, washable and you cant notice touch ups. Would highly recommend even though it is pretty pricey (~£70 for 5 litres). We bought 6 cans from Cane Adams and got 20% discount.

Dulux diamond satinwood on wood work - Tough paint but hard to get a good finish without expensive brushes - I bought a Purdy synthetic just for this paint. Waterbased so shouldnt yellow quickly. Needs 2 coats on skirting and 3 on window sill to get a decent finish.

Dulux trade vinyl matt on ceiling/cove - Goes on well and gives good coverage especially with a roller, I personally dont have any issues with dulux trade for this area of the room.
 
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Yes, Dulux is garbage. Can't comment on matte emulsion but we made the mistake of using their gloss without checking up first and it never completely hardens and has gone yellow within a year. We've ended up repainting. You probably ought to know there are plenty of stories on here moaning about Dulux.

Wickes paint seems to be fine. Their emulsion covers ok but is a bit more splattery than the Crown I used. Their solvent-based paint is very good too but whiffy. Overall it's a good balance between cost and coverage IMO.

A mate of mine did his whole house and found the same it is going yellow. He ended up taking Dulux to a small claims court and got his money back. Might be worth doing the same?
 
Soldato
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Cant you just get the colour matched and mixed up by Dulux?

Dulux don't do mixed colour matches, they do the closest match from their range. Also, the finish is as important as the colour and I don't think Dulux comes close to what we want.

I've heard that Little Green Intelligent Matte is great, but I don't think they do colour matching. I've requested one if their colour charts to see if there is anything we like.
 
Soldato
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A mate of mine did his whole house and found the same it is going yellow. He ended up taking Dulux to a small claims court and got his money back. Might be worth doing the same?

Yep, not only will they give you the dosh back, in a lot of cases they'll pay for a professional decorator to come and sort it.

I know a number of deckies who did just this on behalf of the customer, dulux pays paint and labour. Only trouble is, if they do it again in dulux ob paint, you'll be in the same position 3 months down the line, repeat until insane.
 
Soldato
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I recently decorated my place. Walls- craig and rose chalk paint, wood- Dulux satinwood, ceiling- crown brilliant white premium matt, and bathroom- crown mouldguard matt white. All went on ok. The ceiling paint took a few coats to get a thorough coating.
 
Man of Honour
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All my house is crown paint, cant fault it at all, apart from it does smell a lot

Dulux is rubbish as already said, there wood satin just rubs off in no time
 
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Most of our colours have been F&B modern emulsion. I have never had any problems with it. Although touching up in certain light does show. I have also used Earth Born, Little Greene and Sanderson and have been happy with all of them.

The mark up on Dulux trade is quite large, which may be why he is pushing you that way?
 
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All my house is crown paint, cant fault it at all, apart from it does smell a lot

Dulux is rubbish as already said, there wood satin just rubs off in no time

I used dulux trade satin wood through out my house with no problems still white. Preparation is more important than the paint. with the right prep wickes paint can look good.
 
Soldato
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Most of our colours have been F&B modern emulsion. I have never had any problems with it. Although touching up in certain light does show. I have also used Earth Born, Little Greene and Sanderson and have been happy with all of them.

The mark up on Dulux trade is quite large, which may be why he is pushing you that way?

The modern emulsion is supposed to be much better than the estate emulsion, but that's the minimal sheen look we are going for.

I think Mrs A has been putting words into his mouth; he's not actually pushing Dulux that much. I think we are going to go with Johnstone's Flat Matt and get them to colour match.
 
Soldato
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Go to a proper decorators merchants they will be able to match the colour using a spectrowhateverit'scalled

Use Johnstones covaplus

Covaplus has too much sheen. I'll use the flat matt if I go to Johnstones.

Another +1 for Little Greene intelligent emulsion from me, they will match F&B colours afaik

That's the other option.

Same decorators merchant does both and so I'll get them both to colour match and try them out.
 
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