Richly pigmented colour, made in Dorset since 1946 — and finished here in Columbus the way it deserves: on perfect walls, at full size, in real light. See the colour. Feel the finish. Live with the light.
Presented by Ben Washington · GreatLakes Painting & Renovation L.L.C.
The Experience
A Farrow & Ball colour is never decided from a two-inch chip. It is decided standing in front of it — full-size, finished, moving with the day. That is the experience this page gives you, the same one we give every client, every project.
The Craftsman
I’m Ben Washington — painter, drywall finisher, and the owner of GreatLakes Painting & Renovation L.L.C. My work covers renovation, fine painting and specialist finishes, and it begins where most paint failures begin: the surface. For well over a decade I have worked side by side with professional drywall finishing companies, perfecting the substrate most painters never think about — because colour this good deserves a wall that tells the truth.
Farrow & Ball is the paint I have chosen to build my reputation on. My work with it includes the Gunnar Olivier Design studio at the Michigan Design Center, a 3-story handrail in a lakeside mansion finished in a high gloss so deep it reflects like a mirror, and expanding into the Central Ohio area. This page is how I introduce it: the colour, sheen and light tools here are the same conversations I have with homeowners and designers before a tin is ever opened — so more people in this region can discover what this paint actually does in a room.
Start a colour consultation →Liquid Colour · Interactive
The full library — all 132 Farrow & Ball colours, searchable. Tap any colour and the whole room is rendered in it — every wall, panel and return, in this room’s own light, and nothing else changed. No imagining, no two-inch chip.
How it works, honestly: every one of the 132 colours is a full render of this one room — each painted on every wall, panel and return, keeping the room’s own light and shade, with the prints, the lamp and the furniture exactly as they are. A screen is still an approximation — light changes everything — which is why in person every colour is on a full-size board, in real light, ready to touch.
The Gloss Test · Interactive
Slide it, the way you slide the light. At the left, Dead Flat — colour that absorbs the light and sits quiet. At the right, Full Gloss — the same colour turned to liquid, throwing the room back at you like still water. Every step between is a real finish. Finish is not an afterthought. Finish is half the colour.
Concept room; the two ends of the slider are the true flat and full-gloss renders, blended between. The shine is not a filter — it is preparation: levelled, sealed, sanded, then laid on. That preparation is the work.
Living Light · Interactive
Farrow & Ball’s pigment load gives its colours an exceptional response to light — they do not stay one colour, they live through the day. Change the time of day in this room and watch it happen. Choosing colour in one light is how people choose wrong; we choose it in all of them.
The Substrate · Interactive
Follow one door through the whole process — damaged, repaired, primed, finished. The same sequence runs under every wall, cabinet and piece of trim we paint, because premium paint is brutally honest: it shows exactly what it was given to sit on. This is the work that decides the finish before a tin is opened.
Stage 1 of 4 · The damage
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The starting point. A door that has lived: paint chipped along every panel edge, a gouge torn across the lower panel, a peeling patch lifting down to bare wood. Paint it like this and every defect prints straight through — this is what most ‘paint failures’ actually are.
Look for: 1 — the peeling patch, down to bare wood · 2 — the gouge across the panel · 3 — paint chipping along the mouldings.
One door, four stages — each a full render of the same door, at the same angle and in the same light, so only the surface changes. In the room, this same process runs under every finish we lay.
Chalk & Hand · The Facts
John Farrow and Richard Ball started making paint in Dorset in 1946, to original formulations, with the finest ingredients — and the company never took the shortcuts the rest of the industry did. These are the facts behind the feel.
More high-quality pigment and resin, no low-quality fillers — the reason the colour has visible depth and purity that a screen, and a chip, can only approximate.
Farrow & Ball was the first manufacturer to move to an entirely water-based range — low odour, low VOC, and made from scratch in Dorset, never tinted from a bought base.
Dead Flat at 2% sheen for velvet depth, Estate Emulsion for the signature chalky matt, washable Modern Emulsion at 7%, Modern Eggshell at 40%, and Full Gloss at 95% — lacquer, in a tin.
Farrow & Ball · Columbus, Ohio
Colour consultations, full-size finish boards and cabinets you can run a hand across — and projects across Columbus finished in Farrow & Ball, start to finish. This is what we do, every week.
Ben Washington · GreatLakes Painting & Renovation · Columbus, Ohio & surrounding areas