Paint - Trade or otherwise?

Loulabear

Morning!

We should hopefully have the keys to our first home (at the grand old age of 33!) this Friday. Its taken a while to get a mortgage sorted as I made a lot of foolish financial mistakes in my early 20's so we are both quite excited.

The whole house needs painting and we are going to be using a fairly neutral colour throughout as it just makes life easier. We have three children (11, 6, 1) so would prefer paint that wont come away when cleaned.

Would we best getting Trade paint? I know Dulux do something called Diamond which has fairly good reviews but is quite pricey. We don't mind spending more if it means we wont have to keep repainting.

Can anyone recommend any other good brands that would be suitable?

Thanks in advance

spadoosh

The diamond range is one of the more hard wearing paint ranges so should be up there with the best in terms of durability.

They do a retail version of it too. My understanding is that the opacity is different between retail and trade ranges, basically the trade stuff goes further and offers better coverage.

It depends how you decorate really. Some people like to decorate every year or so, if youre that person, any paint will do, by the time its dirty youre redecorating. If youre someone who wont decorate for 10-15 years, its worth spending the money on the more expensive paints.

Personally im a big fan of valspar paints but in my experience paint brands are a very individual choice. I know plenty of people who dont like using valspar.

The best advice i can offer for getting a good finish is putting all the effort in to the prep work. It takes a few hours painting a room, it can take a few days prepping the room for painting. Dont cut corners with the prep work.

Silvertabby

Johnstone's Trade all the way.

They do an extra hard wearing 'washable' version, and can colour match your Dulux choice.

NaughtiusMaximus

Dulux trade is very good but the colour range is rather limited, white and magnolia I think. For anything else I like Valspar, not the cheapest but covers very well.

Avoid Farrow and Ball at all costs, we needed 4 coats of the stuff over a white undercoat to get decent coverage in the bedroom. Valspar does the job in 2 and is cheaper per litre too.