Farrow & Ball Modern Emulsion: Honest Review (2026)
A Farrow & Ball Modern Emulsion review: the washable 7 percent matte for kitchens and baths, where its color depth softens, and what the price really buys you.
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Verdict: ★ 4.1 / 5
Stand in a kitchen at four in the afternoon and run your eye along the wall where the kettle steams and the kids’ hands land. That is the wall Modern Emulsion was built for. It is Farrow & Ball’s washable matte, a ~7 percent sheen that wipes clean and shrugs off splashes the way the brand’s famous chalky flat never could. You give up a sliver of the velvet depth that makes F&B color sing, and you pay a lot for the privilege. For a high-traffic room where you still want that quiet, light-eating F&B color, it earns its place.
Buy this if: you want a true Farrow & Ball color in a kitchen, bath, hallway, or kids’ room, and you need the wall to survive a damp cloth. Skip this if: the room is calm and low-touch and you want the deepest possible color, or your budget can’t stretch to roughly $130 a gallon.
What Is Farrow & Ball Modern Emulsion?
Farrow & Ball started in Dorset, England, in 1946, mixing paint by hand for the kind of homes where the color on the wall mattered as much as the furniture in front of it. The brand built its name on pigment-rich, light-responsive colors with names you remember and a finish that reads less like a coating and more like a surface that was always there. In the US it sells through Farrow & Ball showrooms, a network of stockists, and farrow-ball.com, and it sits at the top of the price ladder.
Modern Emulsion is the washable wall and ceiling paint in that range. Where the brand’s Estate Emulsion is the soft chalky flat everyone pictures, Modern is the tougher, slightly shinier sibling made for rooms that get used hard. The brand calls it scuff and stain resistant and points it straight at moisture-prone kitchens and bathrooms. It carries built-in mold protection, an A+ indoor air rating, and it is toy-safe. It comes in the full F&B color card, so the color you fell for on a chip is the color you get, washable.
Which Farrow & Ball Wall Paint Are You Buying?
The two emulsions look almost the same on the color card and behave very differently on the wall. This review covers Modern Emulsion. Read the sibling page if your room is the other kind.
| Finish | Sheen | What it’s for | Read instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Modern Emulsion (this review) | ~7% washable matte | Kitchens, baths, hallways, kids’ rooms, any wall that gets touched | — |
| Estate Emulsion | ~2% chalky flat, not washable | Bedrooms, formal living rooms, low-traffic ceilings where color depth is everything | Estate Emulsion review |
| Dead Flat | ~2% matte, more durable than Estate, for walls and woodwork | A premium do-it-all flat, often specified by designers | Separate finish note |
If you bought Estate for a family bathroom because the chip looked the same, take it back. Estate cannot be scrubbed, and the first time you wipe a toothpaste splash off it you will polish a shiny patch into the matte that you cannot blend out. Modern is the one for that room.
Spec Sheet
| Coverage | Up to ~490 sq ft / gal per coat (about 12 sq meters per liter) |
| Sheen | One finish only, ~7% washable matte |
| Dry / Recoat | Touch dry ~2h · recoat ~4h |
| Full cure | Several weeks to full hardness |
| VOC | Low-VOC water base; A+ indoor air quality; toy-safe; mold-protected |
| Primer | F&B Wall & Ceiling Primer & Undercoat (light/mid/dark) on bare or color-jumping surfaces |
| Surfaces | Interior walls and ceilings, including kitchens and bathrooms |
| Sizes | 100ml sample pot, gallon (2.5L), 5L |
| Price tier | $$$$ ($120–149/gal in the US) |
Per-Attribute Sub-Scores
| Attribute | Score | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Coverage | 8/10 | Two coats cover cleanly over a sound similar color; bare plaster or a big jump wants the tinted undercoat first. |
| Workability | 8/10 | Lays out smooth and forgiving with a good 9-inch roller; a touch stickier underbrush than the chalky Estate. |
| Touch-up | 7/10 | Blends better than most mattes thanks to the slight sheen, but a year-old wall can flash where you spot-touch. |
| Washability | 9/10 | This is the whole point. Scuff and stain resistant, wipes clean with mild soap, holds up in a steamy bath. |
| Durability / color retention | 8/10 | Mold-protected and color-stable indoors; the sheen takes shoulder traffic far better than Estate. |
What It’s Good At
- It wipes clean and keeps its calm. This is the finish that lets you put a real Farrow & Ball color behind a stovetop or a sink. A damp cloth with a little dish soap lifts greasy fingerprints around the light switch and splashes above the backsplash without leaving a polished halo. The 7 percent sheen is just enough body to take the wipe and stay matte.
- The color still reads like F&B. Drop a soft white like Pointing or a mid greige into a north-facing kitchen and it does the thing the brand is loved for. It sits quietly against oak and brass, shifts gently from morning cool to afternoon warm, and never goes plasticky the way a big-box washable matte can. You keep most of the drape and depth in a finish you can actually clean.
- Mold protection that matters in a bath. Built-in mold resistance plus a matte that tolerates steam makes this a genuine bathroom wall paint, not a bedroom paint you’re hoping survives. In a small windowless powder room that fogs up after every shower, that protection is the difference between a fresh wall at year two and a speckled ceiling line.
- Ceilings without the shine. Because it is matte and washable, it works on kitchen and bath ceilings where a flat would mark and a satin would glare. The light lands soft and even, and the surface still takes a wipe when cooking film settles up there.
- Low odor, A+ air rating, toy-safe. You can paint a nursery wall on a Saturday and put the crib back Sunday night without the room reeking. For families that is not a footnote, it is the reason the paint stays on the shortlist.
Where It Falls Short
- It is not Estate, and a dark color tells on it. The extra sheen reflects a little more light, so a deep, saturated F&B color reads slightly brighter and a touch less velvety than the same color in Estate. In an inky blue or a deep forest green you can see it at conversational distance once the two are side by side. If the room is calm and the color depth is the entire reason you chose F&B, Modern softens the very thing you paid for.
- The price is hard to defend on a big room. At roughly $120 to $149 a US gallon, a single coat on an average kitchen and ceiling can run past $300 in paint alone, and you want two coats. You are paying for the color library and the brand, not for square footage. A washable matte that performs nearly as well costs a third of that.
- US sizing and stocking friction. F&B sells in metric-derived tins (a “gallon” here is the 2.5L tin, plus a 5L), and outside a showroom city you may be ordering online and waiting. There is no Sunday-morning emergency gallon at the big box.
- Touch-ups can flash on an older wall. The slight sheen helps spot repairs blend better than a dead flat, but on a wall that has been up a year, a fresh dab can catch the light differently. For a clean result on an aged wall, plan to re-roll the whole wall corner to corner rather than dotting in.
Modern vs Estate: The Choice Everyone Gets Wrong
People walk into an F&B showroom, fall for a color on the card, and grab whatever the helpful staff hand them. Then they wipe a wall and learn the difference the hard way.
Estate Emulsion is the ~2 percent chalky flat. It gives the deepest, most light-absorbing version of any F&B color, and it is the look that built the brand. It is not washable. A scrub leaves a shiny scar.
Modern Emulsion is the ~7 percent washable matte. It loses a hair of that velvet depth and gains the ability to live in a real, used room.
The rule is simple. Where the wall gets touched, splashed, steamed, or grabbed by small hands, use Modern. Where the room is quiet and the color is doing emotional work in soft light, use Estate. A formal living room reads richer in Estate. A family kitchen survives in Modern. If you only learn one thing here, learn that.
Who It’s for / Not For
Buy this if: you want a genuine Farrow & Ball color in a kitchen, bathroom, hallway, mudroom, or kids’ room, and you need a matte you can actually clean. The color quality is the reason to pay up, and Modern is the only F&B wall finish that gives you that color and a washable surface in the same can.
Skip this if: the room is low-touch and the color depth is everything (go Estate), you need a fast same-day gallon (go big-box), or the budget for a large room won’t reach roughly $130 a gallon. For a washable matte at a fraction of the price, see the round-up below.
Honest Alternatives
Cheaper: Benjamin Moore Aura Matte ($85–95/gal)
Aura’s matte is washable, holds color beautifully, and touches up better than almost anything in the category, for $40 or so less per gallon. The color library is huge and there is a BM dealer in most towns. You give up the specific F&B color character, the soft light-eating quality that some F&B tones have and Aura simply renders differently. The right pick when you want a premium washable matte without the F&B receipt. → Amazon
Pricier upgrade: Farrow & Ball Dead Flat ($130–155/gal)
If you want F&B color, more durability than Estate, and a flat that works on both walls and woodwork, Dead Flat is the step up. It is the designer’s do-it-all finish. It costs more than Modern and is genuinely matter, so weigh it when the look has to be flawless and the budget is open. → Farrow & Ball
Specialty: a true bathroom-rated acrylic for a wet, windowless room
For a shower-side wall or a windowless bath that fogs after every use, a paint engineered specifically for moisture buys peace of mind beyond Modern’s built-in mold protection. The mold-resistant specialists in the round-up below are built for exactly that punishment. → Best bathroom paint
Kompozit Alternative
If your real goal is a clean, washable matte on a kitchen or hallway wall and the F&B color is a want, not a need, Kompozit Interior Matte Wall Paint is the value pick. It is a value-positioned interior wall paint that wipes down and holds up at roughly a third of Modern’s per-gallon cost, which on a whole kitchen and ceiling is real money saved.
Choose Kompozit when you want a durable, low-cost washable matte and you are happy mixing your color at the paint-store tinting machine rather than buying into the F&B card. Choose Modern Emulsion when the specific Farrow & Ball color, the way it sits against wood and shifts with the light, is the actual reason you are painting the room. Kompozit gives you a good, honest wall. Modern gives you that wall in an F&B color you can clean. They are not the same purchase, and the price gap is the size of that difference.
Where to Buy
| Retailer | Notes | Buy |
|---|---|---|
| Farrow & Ball | Full color card, sample pots, showroom and online; best stocking | → Farrow & Ball |
| Amazon | Limited third-party sellers; check finish and tin size before buying | → Amazon |
| F&B stockists | Independent paint and design shops in showroom cities | → Farrow & Ball |
Buy direct from Farrow & Ball or a stockist so you get the right finish in the right tin and a sample pot first. Always paint a sample patch and live with it for a few days, because F&B color shifts more than most paints between morning and evening light. A 100ml pot on the wall for a weekend will save you a $300 mistake.