Farrow & Ball paint with Benjamin Moore Primer?
No comments to Pratt and Lambert?
stevecym
in General Discussion 3 years and 9 months ago
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15 replies
dkfndtxstrg | 3 years and 9 months ago
Hi all – is it ok to use a non-F&B primer with F&B paints? We had specified F&B paints with our team, but just noticed they are using a Benjamin Moore primer (Fresh Start). F&B seems to say they don’t recommend this, but we were hoping to find out from anyone who has experience on this if it is an issue or if we can move forward with the BM primer? Thank you!
stevecym | 3 years and 9 months ago
I called the farrow store in Manhattan about this some years back and they told me that their primers were tinted to specific paint colors and to really achieve the maximum benefit of those colors, their primers should be used. That said, fresh start is fine and no the paint is not going to peel off the walls just because you use ben Moore primer.
You can ask the painters to tint the primer a little. With most of the painting I have ever done in my adult life, I tint primers to the color. About half the primers in my shop have been tinted to something. Not as dark as the color but in the direction of the color. If you talk to your painters about tinting and they do not know what you are talking about or tell you things dont have to be tinted, they are not painters. If the customer wants the primer tinted, the primer gets tinted – besides, it may very well make the painters job easier.
Now that I said that, I am not fully sure farrow tints to the color. I think I had my guys use a blue once and i think the primer farrow told us to use was grey. I think. Its years.
Guest User | 3 years and 9 months ago
If you google this, there is plenty on the topic. It is ok to use a different primer. People do it and of course FB would not recommend as their paint/primer probably complement one another better than mixing two diff brands. That doesn’t mean it won’t look or be fine.
hkapstein | 3 years and 9 months ago
Manufacturers test and evaluate their products under controlled conditions, and typically they would use their own primer. Unremarkably, these conditions are reflected in the instructions they supply with the paint, with the idea being that you can expect the product to work the manner advertised. If you deviate from this, you could get the same result, a worse result, a better result, a cheaper result, or just a different result.
When painting you typically don’t want to be surpised by the outcome. Unless I have a good reason, I usually try to replicate the process recomended by the manufacturer. But since you have a reason for wanting to use this combination, why not make a test panel and see if it works the way you expected? You won’t know if long term durability is affected, but it’s probably a good bet that if the coatings are compatible they won’t suddenly start jumping off the walls in a year. If you find it does make a diffference, it shouldn’t be too bad to paint over it with the originally specified primer.
Steve, I’m finding it interesting that you so frequ ently tint your primers, and maybe that’s something I probably need to think about. I’m usually not that picky about color, but I can see how it could make a significant difference.
colonialrevival | 3 years and 9 months ago
F&B is not worth the price tag if you do some digging to find why… just color match to B&M Regal Select and save yourself a chunk of change.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 9 months ago
now that colonial pointed that out, and i agree, i will add this: i once had someone tell me that they felt like F&B was more environmentally friendly than what we have here in the US. i repeated that statement to a former editor for Mother Earth News Magazine and that person said to me “once you put it on a ship it is no longer environmentally friendly”.
with what urban dad is saying about primers, once you call any of these manufacturers and get the right person on the phone who realizes he or she is talking to someone in the field and not a homeowner, and you ask them very pointed questions about using others primers, they will tell you you can use them. all of them will say that – i went through this twenty years ago when i realized i needed other primers for other reasons (to me the primer is one of the most important parts of the job; nothing gets done here without a primer, sometimes coats of different primers). here is what else they will tell you about using another primer: “the reason we say something like that is because we only test our product u sing our primer” (which is what urbandad said). in other words, they are unwilling to make a claim about someone else’s primer. but technically, it is all good.
tinting helps is you are trying to go over a difficult color or if you are trying to move fast away from the white primer. if you have two coats of paint to paint a wall over a white primer, that may lighten the top coat a little in spots. so a little tint in the direction of the paint color helps. i have met “painters” today who never heard of tinting primer and will argue with me over it. if you meet people who do not know what tinted primer is, they are not painters.
I find their colors to be a little deeper even if the same as Ben’s. if someone wants to try something a little different try Pratt and Lambert. I used to use it inside and liked the way it went on but that was so long ago that formulations may have changed. i used to think of Pratt as the real top end paint because i used to find it in a paint store on the upper east side – that thinking may have been off though.
hkapstein | 3 years and 9 months ago
One surprise that might happen is that the paint could look different in different areas if different primers are used, so that might be something to watch out for.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 9 months ago
yes, consistency on any job is important.
people here may not realize this but old professional painters, when they got say four gallons of paint in one gallon cans to do say a large room or hallway, they would “box” them. what that means was they stirred each individual can and then poured the cans together in a bucket and stirred that together and worked from the mixed batch – just in case there were any variations between any of the cans.
something else important. a lot of today’s “painters” are used to working with freshly mixed paint. so they do not have to stir it when they get on the job. when those same painters get on a job where the paint is being given to them and they have no idea how long it has been sitting, they often do not stir it. this causes major problems.
with stains, keep stirring through the job. i get photos of doors that other people did, including a massive one way upstate that the people wanted to pay me to drive up and fix and the door went from light to dark from top to bottom. the clowns who stained it did not stir the stain as they worked and the colorants settled to the bottom (we constantly stir the stain and generally, on a larger project, work out of a smaller cup to keep from darkening the stain left in the can).
you cannot explain “consistency” to the current mass of “trades” people out there. it is impossible to explain it to them and they will follow instructions if you babysit them but as soon as you turn your back they are up to their old tricks and they can and do ruin jobs. even with op, hopefully it is not an issue, but they knew damn well what they were doing when they switched from one primer to the other and they had no business doing it without clearing it first and if you switch back now it may very well look off.
nyc_sport | 3 years and 9 months ago
Our renovation was done with BM primers all around, and a mixture of F&B and BM paints. It might be nice to pigment the primer and do it room by room, but my recollection is that our entire place was taped off and primed walls and ceilings with sprayers, so the whole place (nearly 4,000 sq ft) was primed in a few days. I reiterate what Colonial said about getting F&B color matched with BM paints. Not just because of price, but for deep, dark colors (a deep red in our office), the F&B paint needed 5-6 coats (of course, you can say that is because we didn’t tint the primer). We later needed to replace a piece of that wall and the BM paint matched in 3 coats. Also, if you later need a pint to touch up, it is much easier to get a small can of BM paint.
cate | 3 years and 9 months ago
It will be completely fine. I paint with both products all the time, and always use BM Fresh Start primer. Also, re the comment about the environment, F&B paints were made and shipped from Canada when they first arrived in the U.S. I think they may be producing them locally now because the delivery time is much shorter.
stevecym | 3 years and 9 months ago
To what nyc sport said about 5 to 6 coats, that is exactly why the want you using their primer. I do not encounter that with ben but did have a hell of a time covering a 1970s burnt orange in this house with fresh start. When trying to hide old dark colors, try the oil base bin cover stain.
hkapstein | 3 years and 9 months ago
5 coats sounds like an awesome use of labor.
andriywww1990 | 3 years and 9 months ago
cate, i had to call them and ask them. the paint bases are manufactured in the UK and bulk shipped to Canada where they are mixed with color and put in gallon cans and then shipped to North American retailers.
I seem to recall them touting the England thing as though it meant we were getting something better, old world, that we cannot get here. that is a big part of their persona and marketing.
Guest User | 3 years and 9 months ago
Their differentiators are the amount of pigment that yields rich color, the method of formulation that provides the hue variation based on light/situational context and lastly the ease of use. The positioning and value prop. comes across clearly in their marketing. If I would fault them on one thing is they don’t back this up with numbers, at least not overtly. Numbers would be a nice to have and not essential – it doesn’t necessarily jive with the brand persona.
cate | 3 years and 9 months ago
Benjamin Moore used to have a “best quality” (and more expensive) option that clearly had superior colors with a high degree of pigment and little clay. I recently purchased a bunch of paint from Janovic using the old base with paint only (primer not included) and this didn’t seem to be an option anymore, sadly. Funnily enough I painted one wall in a room with three other walls already painted and it does seem like the older paint is more attractive, with hints of other colors and more depth of color — even though it’s the same color.