Farrow & Ball Paint?

[NewEnglandLady]

DH and I had some unexpected home renovations that have essentially left us needing to repaint many rooms in our house. Fun, right? HA! Figuring out how to paint one room is fun, but trying to coordinate colors for multiple rooms has been painful.

After looking through dozens of magazines, pinterest, houzz, etc., I finally chose a handful of Benjamin Moore options that I wanted to use. I bought samples of the various colors in the scheme I wanted and even painted one bathroom and am happy with the results. But the color I'd chosen for the living room & family room just never seemed quite right.

Enter Farrow & Ball. When trying to find the perfect color the living and family rooms, I stumbled on a Farrow & Ball color that I think would be perfect. But here are my issues:

1. I've already bought some of the Benjamin Moore paint, thus I'll have to choose Farrow & Ball colors that work within the same scheme. If I were starting from scratch, I'd just use all F&B colors.

2. The finishes would be slightly different. I've bought all BM trim color in a semi-gloss finish, so the trim will have a slightly different finish than the walls.

3. It's expensive.

4. There are no convenient F&B stores, plus the samples are kind of expensive, so I can't buy a ton of colors and try them all out. The only F&B store in New England is here in Boston, but it's not exactly convenient to work and they aren't open on the weekends.

So part of me is thinking that I should stick with Benjamin Moore and just keep working to find a living/family room color that Iove and not go down the Farrow & Ball path, whereas another part of me thinks I'd love the F&B colors more and it would be worth it, even if I end up deciding to re-paint the bathroom.

Just curious if there are other F&B users out there and if they think it's worth it to scrap my current scheme with BM paints and basically start over with F&B paints?

 

[lliang_chi]

NEL, why don't you color match the F&B colors? That way you can use BenMoor paint (less expensive) but still get the color you like. It's been done, and the paint guy won't frown upon it. Are you painting yourself? We have to repaint our living and master. THus far we got some quotes, but I'm kinda feeling like maybe we should just do the painting ourselves.

 

[vc10um]

NEL, why don't you color match the F&B colors? That way you can use BenMoor paint (less expensive) but still get the color you like. It's been done, and the paint guy won't frown upon it. Are you painting yourself? We have to repaint our living and master. THus far we got some quotes, but I'm kinda feeling like maybe we should just do the painting ourselves.

Ditto this. They may only be able to get like a 90-95% match becuase the bases are slightly different, etc., but they should be able to get fairly close!

This website will also tell you which companies have the closest match to certain colors. I found it really helpful for trying to coordinate between palettes.

 

[Enerchi]

F&B paints are clay based and pre-coloured in the factory. They almost cover in 1 coat, but the 2nd fully covers. They wash well/wear well and rarely fade out - even the strongly pigmented colours. I have it used this paint in several rooms in my own home and the flat finish is amazing!! I haven't even been tempted to change the colours --- and I'm always asking DH to paint for me!

I have done the colour match attempts in the past for clients that have wanted to use the F&B colours, but in a different manufacturer, and it hasn't worked well. The intensity and depth of colour is missing. There really isn't the same finish and quality as there is with the original - IMO.

Is there a room that you could transition betwen BM to F&B? Kind of minimize the colour scheme transition?

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Good idea, ladies. I've read repeatedly that color match doesn't work with with F&B paint because 1.) The pigment is richer than BM paints can achieve and 2.) The paint is non-latex, so some of the quality is lost when you color match to a latex paint. I think my best bet is to just use the F&B colors that are closest to the scheme I'd already chosen.

LC, if you're just doing your living room and master, you could probably tackle it yourself. It's just so difficult with a 1-year-old running around, you know? We repainted our master a couple of years ago and it took me a weekend...I basically just painted non-stop. This time around I can only paint for a few hours after K goes to bed--I can only devote Friday or Saturday nights to it and it took me a month to do a small bathroom. I'm not a patient person, nor do I like projects hanging over my head, so having a half-painted room for weeks drives me crazy.

I'd originally planned to hire a painter, but I got 3 quotes and none were under $10K, so now I'm doing as much as I can myself and just hiring a painter for the most difficult rooms. The bigger issue is that I don't want to TTC until it's done, so that's giving me extra incentive to try to wrap it up ASAP.

ETA: Enerchi, I typed my response before I saw yours. Since the only BM color I've put on the walls is in the bathroom, I'm hoping it won't be that noticeable that it's the only non-F&B paint. The bigger issue is that I've already bought BM paint for the trim-work. Do you think having semi-gloss trim work and the matte F&B finish on the walls will look awful? I figure that if all the trim work looks the same and is the unifying element between all rooms, it may not be that bad. And I've seen examples where trim work has more of a sheen than the walls. I don't know.

 

[Enerchi]

No problem at all with that plan NEL!! The trim IS the unifying factor and that shouldn't be a problem -- it will really make the highly pigmented hue of the F&B *punch* up! I think it will be amazing...

What colour trim did you go for? and what F&B colours are you looking at?

 

[NewEnglandLady]

So the trim is called White Dove. It's boring white, but I kid you not I had at least a dozen samples of white. We have white trim throughout the house and I needed to match the white I'm using with the white that is currently in the house since we're not repainting every single room. I think it worked out well since F&B has pretty limited options for trim colors.

For the F&B colors--I'm ordering the colour book and some samples to validate what I see in my head, but I'm thinking of doing Cooking Apple Green in our kitchen and dining room. Then I'm thinking of a creamy yellow or beige for the living room. Maybe Farrow's Cream? And then I'd like to do something like Light Blue in our office with a darker blue (Oval Room Blue) for the built-in bookshelves. I want for it to match the blue I've done in the bathroom, so we'll see how closely the hues match.

What F&B colors have you used? Do you have favorites? We live in an 18th century house, so I'm really trying to use era-accurate colors.

 

[Enerchi]

NEL - the ones I have used in my own home are:
Office - Sugar Bag Light and it is the ONE colour in the almost 14 years we have lived in this house that I have ZERO intention of ever changing!! It is the most comfortable colour to be enveloped in (for DH and I) and no matter what the lighting is - natural bright East sunny morning, office lighting, evening.... it always feels perfect! I love this colour!

Dining room was Blazer for the longest time. I think I had 7 years of it that colour - LOVED it! then went to a purple phase which I still love so our DR and powder room are now BM Jester (simply because F&B Radicchio wasn't purple enough for me!)

Exterior doors - Studio Green - a black/green and it looks AWESOME! (IMHO!!)

For my mother, when she moved into her condo, I selected a few companies (F&B, PARA, PPG and B&M) but the F&B ones in her unit are Chinese Blue in the front foyer and we did a tone on tone glaze effect that created stripes, and the main LR/DR is Hound Lemon - a mid tone lemon without being toooooo lemony/intense/"sun" colour and works well in the evening as well. Her unit faces south and it is a well balanced yellow hue.

For clients --- whoa! too many to describe but for trims, generally my F&B trim favourites are James White or Clunch.

I have used Cooking Apple Green quite a few times in kitchen/office/den rooms and it is beautiful but be cautious if your room faces west - it tends to wash it out.

I love the Oval Room Blue!! Depending on if you are wanting to contrast with a lighter blue, I'd also have a look at either Parma Gray if you are pulling out the gray aspect; Dix Blue for a subtle difference or Blue Ground for the blue to be the main focus.

Sounds beautiful!!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

I couldn't find sugar bag light on their site, so had to google old images. It's gorgeous! Those blue-green tones are my absolute favorite and i'm thinking of using a similar color in our old staircase (will be the kids' staircase).

So funny that you mention going through a purple phase. My coworker went through something similar and I think she used F&B's Brinjal in her foyer. She said it took a few days to get used to the dark color, but now she likes it.

I love the Studio Green color. I've been thinking of using it on the floor of the hallway outside of our bedroom. Usually the thought of painting over wood would give me the vapors, but the floor was already painted when we moved in and that floor gets a lot of light, so I think the subtle green color would look really pretty.

I'm seriously considering Hound Lemon for our living and family rooms. My original plan was to do both rooms in a deep buttery yellow, but then with the blue bathroom and office and the green kitching/dining room, I was afraid it was just too much color. Hence why I was thinking of dialing it down and doing something more beige. I'm the worst about color--I use it way too much and don't know how to tone things down, so I'm trying.

I love the Parma Grey color. The bathroom I just painted is in BM's Yarmouth Blue, which is a light/medium blue with grey undertones and I like it.

Thanks for the tip on Cooking Apple Green. The windows in our kitchen and dining area face north, east and west, although strangely we don't get a lot of light in the room late in the day. I may still change my mind once I get the fan deck.

 

[Jennifer W]

My own house is painted in a mix of Farrow and Ball and Craig and Rose paints. I think the C&R gives a superior finish by far, so if you can find it, grab it. It's awesome. Beautifully dense with pigment, even the light colours contrive to look rich. That said, although I can tell the difference if it's side by side with a F&B paint, F&B is pretty good and very densely pigmented too. I like it a lot.

Funny, but we're staying in a rental croft house right now, and every room is painted in F&B paints here too. It's beautiful. They have gone for a wider colour palette than I have chosen at home, and although all of the colours are muted, they are still very pleasing and very vibrant (if that isn't too much of a contradiction).

I've used all sorts of paints in house renovations over the years, and F&B or C&R are the only ones I've been really happy with. It's partly the colours available, and partly the quality of the paint - overall, it just seems to go on better, and hold up better to wear and tear. Plus, when I was cleaning up our house for friends to stay in while I'm away, I found that you can touch up F&B painted walls. I mean, you can get the original can out of the garage, ten years after you applied it in the first place, knock off the rust, prise it open, and just slap some over the drawings your child put on the living room wall when you weren't looking. When it dries, you can't tell where you touched up. I don't think you can do that with most paint, the pigments fade, the liquid dries up in the can, the difference is visible when dry. Not with this stuff. For that alone, I think it's worth the money.

Downside - the eggshell stuff goes very slightly grey over time (I'm talking ten plus years here). I think the F&B emulsions are formulated to a much higher standard than the eggshell, which for my preferences is a little thin, with less heavily pigmented coverage. It's still better than 99% of other brands I've tried, but for eggshell, I go with C&R.

 

[Jennifer W]

BTW, don't know if this helps, but another non-latex, high pigment paint I've found which I like a lot is Laura Ashley. I actually go for LA if I need a cream colour, since it's the only one I ever found that I like in daylight and also in electric light. It matches well with F&B, the finish is very close.

(I realise as I type this that I have spent far too large a portion of my life painting stuff.)

 

[webdiva]

I haven't used Farrow & Ball but I do hear great things about it. However, it does sound like it's somewhat inconvenient for you. I tried a ton of different paints in the house and I keep coming back to Benjamin Moore. I painted my bedroom in a dark charcoal in Benjamin Moore Aura (the higher end eco friendly paint) and it's fantastic! It covered in ONE coat from white to charcoal, has a luscious matte finish and cleans well. It's much, much better than the regular BM Regal, etc paints. Just another option for ya. The matte will look fine with semi-gloss trim, btw - most people paint their trim semi-gloss for ease of cleaning.

 

[backwardsandinheels]

I did a really pale baby pink in our bedroom and I would suggest a primer for the lighter colors if painting over darker. My painter did not
and had never used F & B. He must have thought it was the usual Dutch Boy one coater.

 

[NewEnglandLady]

Thanks, all! I spent the entire weekend comparing colors and trying to decide. I ended up deciding to use F&B colors in the kitchen, dining, living and family rooms. Oddly, I liked the Benjamin Moore blues better, so I'm sticking with Benjamin Moore for our office, but webdiva, I think I'll go the Aura route since you like it.

 

[Enerchi]

Which F&B ones did you finally decide up on??? I have my swatches right beside me --- excited to see what you're putting together!!

 

[NewEnglandLady]

I decided to stick with Cooking Apple Green for the kitchen and dining area. I will admit that I'm slightly nervous because I know how much more vibrant greens are when they are on the wall than on the swatch. And our kitchen/dining area is kind of large. Still, after comparing a ton of greens, I like Cooking Apple Green best.

For the living and family rooms (and a foyer in-between), I'm going with Dorset Cream. I thought I'd like Farrow's Cream more, but it's just a bit light for me. I had originally wanted to do something more yellow (like Dayroom Yellow), but with Cooking Apple Green in the kitchen and dining rooms and blues in the bathroom and office, I just think it was too much and wanted to tone it down with something more beige-y.

I'm attaching a pic that I took a couple of weeks ago of the dining area--this will be cooking apple green (I have some Benjamin Moore swatches on the wall next to the fireplace). Behind the dining area are the living and family rooms which will be Dorset Cream.

I'm definitely open to suggestions if you have some.

Oh, and I'm going to be using Arsenic in an old original staircase that is rarely used. About 10 years ago, my husband and I visited Mt. Vernon and D loved the bright green in the dining room there. He's always joked that he wants a room that color. The old staircase is the only place I'm willing to use that vibrant of a color!