F&B's Estate Emulsion - any comments, good or bad?

[Tom]

I'm thinking about using F&B's Estate Emulsion on my gyspum plastered walls now. Does anyone have any comments on this...good or bad? Is it worth the price or are we just paying for the name? Thanks.

 

[Penners]

are we just paying for the name?

Yes.

 

[benmc]

We have used it in both lounge and kitchen and are very happy.

The colours are very nice and subtle.

Ben

 

[JoceAndChris]

Yes, arguably you are paying for the name if you're just using cream or white but...


1) Farrow and Ball products can be free, sort of, if you shop at Sainsbury's and collect the vouchers, and then spend them in Homebase. Homebase will order the colour in if they don't stock them. This is curiously satisfying, even though it's possibly cheaper to shop in Asda and buy Dulux.

2) The difference in price between Dulux and FnB is minimal.

3) The pigmentation in the FnB colours is radically different to Dulux. The colours are mixed to look dirty and old. I've tried Dulux Heritage and it's not, not, not the same.

4) The colours come with a historical guide which is really useful if you're attempting a particular period - for example "Dauphin" - "an earth pigment colour in the early 18th century school of drab". As far as I know, no other product is as educational - I read that key over and over, it's fascinating.

I really love Farrow and Ball colours - this is the second property where I'm using the colours throughout. I love how they change through the day depending on the light, and everyone says - "but what is the colour, is it green - or blue - or beige?" - they're characterised by a sludginess that's not found on the other paint charts. This is something you either love or find utterly pretentious.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh, I forgot to say that what's also fantastic about FnB is that if you're using Print Room Yellow, for example, they tell you which white to use for the complementary woodwork. I've tried straying from their injunctions and it doesn't work at all. They really have worked it all out.

 

[Lime]

Paying for the name, the quality isn't that good, batches vary considerably and it is expensive compared to many makes a quarter the price.

F&B put a quantity of black into their products to bring the colour down.

Any colour can be easily copied if you have a sample.
Even the cheap paints (Macpherson for example) offer paint slightly more expensive made to order.
The colour you provide is scanned and copied.

I think Dulux lost the plot 40 years ago.

 

[Tom]

Thanks, Joce, this is very helpful. The last thing I want is 'flat' colour, which most 'modern' paints seem to have.

Do any other brands rival F&B, in terms of what Joce is talking about?

 

[Juju]

I've used all brands of paint - I think my favourite is Little Greene Paint but I also like F&B and have used Fired Earth and Laura Ashley in the past which were good too. I loathe the smell of Dulux and Homebase, B&Q etc own brands so won't use them except for Dulux trade white emulsion on ceilings. For the next room I'm planning to try out the new Natural Paint range which you mix yourself and leftovers can be composted!

 

[robgil]

a lady next door had a painter in while i was doing some plumbing for her , i asked him what he thought of f+b paint and he said it was crap , he said it was difficult to use.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Builders always say that about FnB. That's because a) they're affected by the reverse snobbery currently rampaging through the UK b) FnB needs 3 coats, needs thinning down, needs stirring, needs applying with love. They can't be bothered with that.

Little Greene does look very nice and is endorsed by English Heritage. It has the blurb about the colours that I love: "Invisible Green: made popular by the landscape gardener Humphrey Repton who recommended it for fencing and railings so that they would blend better with the background vegetation".

There are 120 colours (as opposed to FnB's 132), and they do matching wallpaper - this though, didn't meet my exacting standards and so I've had to reject the matching paint. (the wallpaper is thin and flimsy in contrast to FnB's, and doesn't have the raised paint texture of hand-blocking).

The previous owner in this house used Johnsons' paint and attempted to make it look a bit "historical" with mixing in darker colours; the effect is revolting.

FnB paint isn't just dirtied with black, when you stir the pot there are all sorts of surprising colours.

 

[Lime]

FnB paint isn't just dirtied with black, when you stir the pot there are all sorts of surprising colours.

Precisely.
If it were mixed properly you would not see those pigments still separate.
Unless you ensure every little scrap of "surprising" colour is mixed in, the colour will not be right.

All paints of any colour are made from many different colours, even the whites.
To see blobs of unmixed pigment suggests that F&B aren't thorough in their mixing processes.

 

[robgil]

this particular painter did mention something about having to go back and make good blotches and such in the finish but he said something about having to go over the whole lot again because of colour changes or something like that. sounds like poorly mixed paint now that you mention it.
i suppose if you are careful and really mix the paint well before applying it then it would be ok , just make sure you mix all your pots together.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Aaaaarghh.

I've painted 15 rooms with it, plus exterior woodwork, and never, ever had a problem. It needs stirring for about a minute. When you buy the next pot because you've run out, you stir that for about a minute. There's no difference in the colour between one pot and the next.

They do all the matching breathable finishes in all the colours, whereas Little Greene don't (they only make pastel colours in the limewash and distemper)- allowing you to use the same colour on your gypsum and woodwork and old lime plaster. They make beautiful matching wallpaper. Their paint can be bought in every town in England. They advise you about what colour goes with what. I really don't see what more you could ask from a company, and reading about the painter Rob is talking about makes me more certain than ever that professional decorators who want to rush the job and can't be bothered with the preparation are not for me!

 

[biffvernon]

Paint is basically two things - the stuff that makes it coloured and the stuff that makes it a liquid, the medium.

Most modern paints, Dulux etc, use dyes to make it coloured + TiO2 to make it white. Old fashioned paints and their modern substitutes like F&B use mineral pigments. These are tiny particles of various metal oxides and other minerals, ground up small but still crystalline. This does give a quite different appearance to the paints that are coloured with dyes.

The stuff that makes it liquid might be water ( limewash, clay paints) or might be linseed oil (Alback/Holkham Paints) or an emulsion of oil and water but with most modern paints, instead of linseed oil they use alkyd or acrylic resins.

Then there's the binder - the stuff that holds it all together after volatiles have evaporated. With linseed oil paint the medium and the binder are the same thing, the oil. There are no volatiles. With old fashioned water paints, milk or eggs are added as a binder. Time for lunch.

(Yes, builders and decorators often prefer the worst paint as it may be easier to use. They don't have to live with it.)

 

[Lime]

Aaaaarghh.

I've painted 15 rooms with it, plus exterior woodwork, and never, ever had a problem. It needs stirring for about a minute. When you buy the next pot because you've run out, you stir that for about a minute. There's no difference in the colour between one pot and the next.

They do all the matching breathable finishes in all the colours, whereas Little Greene don't (they only make pastel colours in the limewash and distemper)- allowing you to use the same colour on your gypsum and woodwork and old lime plaster. They make beautiful matching wallpaper. Their paint can be bought in every town in England. They advise you about what colour goes with what. I really don't see what more you could ask from a company, and reading about the painter Rob is talking about makes me more certain than ever that professional decorators who want to rush the job and can't be bothered with the preparation are not for me!

But no paint of their manufacture is made from linseed oil.
It is all modern chemicals throughout.
They were once a reputable supplier of old-fashioned thick-bodied paint but that changed 20 years ago, roundabout the same time they decked their tins with the National Trust logo, but IME they are now only in it for the money.

As for the blobs of pigment in the paint I have been unable to mix them out in some tins, particularly the lime dead flat oil and gloss.
(I'm talking big tins not half litre)
The particles of pigment are quite hard.
I think 3/4 of an hour of continuous stirring should be enough for any paint.... but it wasn't.

 

[Pford75]

We've used estate emulsion and are very pleased with the results. F&B's oil eggshell was also fantastic (much better than their water based eggshell)...not on general sale any more, but they do hold stores if you ask them.

I can see the sentiment that F&B have become 'trendy' and this has probably resulted in a slightly higher price as a result, but as Joce says, there is a reverse snobbery at play here as well. I've found F&B's soft distemper to be great as well.

I suspect that the reason many decorators don't like it is that it is supposed to be finished with a brush not a roller. This obviously takes much longer, but I can vouch personally that the result is much, much better.

Besides, I really don't think it's that expensive in the context of wallpaper, curtains, flooring etc.

 

[LadyArowana]

I can't get excited about paint. Is F and B nicer? maybe a bit. Do I care? no. I am much more passionate about what hangs on my walls and where my walls are, and I am not to be trusted when it comes to buying light fittings ( antique and French and oooops did I really sign that ). I think everyone has different things they are happy to spend $$$'s on, if knowing it's F and B makes you happy and you can tell the difference that's fine. Same as if you have to have La Perla undies, I can do with M and S, but the money goes to the jeweller* instead.

* to be strictly honest the handbag and shoe shops do OK too

 

[Gareth Hughes]

I would endorse Joce's statement about the "quality" of the "look" of the F&B colour finish being "better" (a subjective judgement, I admit and it is possible or even probable that other paints will produce those same qualities) than most other readily-available (by which I mean most places will have an outlet within 10 miles) paints, including the bigger manufacturers' "Heritage" range.
I would also agree (and have no rival paints to compare this with) that there is sometimes quite a noticeable difference in the actual colour between different batches of what are supposed to be the same colour.
It does also smack of Aga-saga, yummy-mummy, Sam-Cam, jolly hockey sticks and every other bit of reverse snobbery that can be thrown at it, but that's a result of F&B having pretty much cornered the mass market in their particular kind of paint, not a defect with the product.

 

[robgil]

i just googled yummy mummy. :shock:
tell me yummy mummy means something else?

 

[biffvernon]

I can't get excited about paint. ... I am much more passionate about ... where my walls are

Yeah, I can see it's important to know where the wall is before you worry overmuch about paint brand.