ARE EXPENSIVE PAINTS WORTH IT

With the cost of everything rising on an almost daily basis, saving money is a must.… So we ask are the more expensive items always worth the extra?

Expensive brands, hype or substance?
We’ve all heard of the expensive brands of paint, Farrow & Ball, Zoffany, Little Green, and plenty of others. We know what lovely rich and stylish colours these offer with imaginative names such as Dead Salmon, Elephants breath, Ashes of Roses and Dash of Soot….
Paint is not all about the name though, the ‘body’ and opacity of the paint is so important and unfortunately a lot of the expensive paints fail in this regard. 

Water based Eggshell and Gloss
A lot of brand paints are now only doing water based paints, which on paper seems to be a win win situation. No more solvent smells, easy to clean up using soap and water, drying time is so much quicker, but there are also some fundamental flaws with water based paint. When it comes to emulsion, water based paint is perfect, leaves a nice flat even finish, rolls on quickly and easily, a timeless process that hasn’t altered for years. However when it comes to topcoats, yes there are the advantages, but also disadvantages, it dries quickly giving you a likelihood of have ‘fat edges’, this is where the paint has began to dry and as the paint adjacent to it is applied it can drag and overlay on itself. Oil based paints, flow and stay workable for much longer, allowing you to get a more even finish when laying off.

Spraying paints
Now when it comes to spraying paint, water based paints are much better. Again all the aforementioned benefits still apply, the drying time, cleaning etc, but it takes away the problem of fat edges. However spraying set ups can be very expensive, very messy, with regards to overspray, wasteful as you use more paint on account of the overspray and difficult to master the technique sometimes...

Other brands colour matching
This can be a major dilemma once you’ve chosen your colour. Yes cheaper brands such as Dulux and Johnstones do a trade equivalent of many of the designer brands, but contrary to popular belief, it is never an exact replica. They chose a close match from their own collection and generally, it is a very good match but very rarely exact. So if you’re looking for a perfect colour to match your accessaries and need it to be perfect then designer paints it is…..

In Summary
If you’re looking to make a statement, and it needs to be spot on, designer it is, if however your looking for a softer neutral pastel, then the cheaper brands are perfect. However bear in mind, when I say ‘Cheaper’ I do mean a decent quality paint from an established high street brand, Dulux, Crown, Johnstones…. don’t be tempted by a supermarket, budget shop own brand…….that really can be cats p**s