Farrow & Ball to Dulux: the trade equivalent for 24 colours, measured

Farrow & Ball does not publish a Dulux conversion chart, and it has no reason to. So the equivalents circulating in forums and on Pinterest are mostly somebody's eye, somebody's screen, and a photograph taken under somebody else's light.

This table is none of those. Every Farrow & Ball colour here is tied to an NCS shade, the international colour standard a trade merchant can mix to, and the distance between the two is measured rather than judged. The colours are the 24 people search for most, not the ones that photograph well.

Farrow & Ball to Dulux Heritage, measured

Fit is how close the NCS shade sits to the original colour. dE is the measured distance: under 1 is invisible, 1 to 2 shows only with the two side by side, over 3.5 is a shift you will notice on a wall.

Farrow & Ball colour	NCS shade	LRV	Trade match	Fit	dE
Skimming stone No. 241	S 1502-Y50R	66	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.53
Jitney No. 293	S 3005-Y20R	46	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	3.27
Broccoli brown No. W108	S 6005-Y20R	18	Dulux Heritage	Nearest shade	3.63
Drop cloth No. 283	S 2005-Y10R	51	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.6
Treron No. 292	S 4010-G70Y	26	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	3.12
Ammonite No. 274	S 2002-Y20R	66	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	3.11
School house white No. 291	S 1005-Y10R	74	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.96
Shaded white No. 201	S 1505-Y20R	66	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.75
Mouse's back No. 40	S 5010-Y10R	26	Dulux Heritage	Nearest shade	3.83
Card room green No. 79	S 4010-G30Y	27	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	2.52
Strong white No. 2001	S 1002-Y20R	80	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.67
Brinjal No. 222	S 7010-R10B	7	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	2.41
Setting plaster No. 231	S 1510-Y60R	57	Dulux Heritage	Exact	0.25
Hardwick white No. 5	S 3005-Y	44	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	2.04
Pink ground No. 202	S 0907-Y70R	72	Dulux Heritage	Exact	0.87
Wimborne white No. 239	S 0502-Y20R	89	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.36
Pigeon No. 25	S 3502-Y	35	Dulux Heritage	Slight shift	2.73
Bancha No. 298	S 6020-G70Y	13	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.57
Oxford stone No. 264	S 2005-Y40R	53	Dulux Heritage	Exact	0.98
De Nimes No. 299	S 5005-B20G	21	Dulux Heritage	Exact	0.64
Red earth No. 64	S 3030-Y70R	26	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.62
Stirabout No. 300	S 1505-Y40R	64	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.46
Dimity No. 2008	S 0804-Y30R	77	Dulux Heritage	Exact	0.72
Borrowed light No. 235	S 1002-G	72	Dulux Heritage	Close	1.17

How the matching actually works

A trade merchant does not stock Farrow & Ball colours. What they can do is tint a base to any NCS code, which is a published standard describing a colour by how much black is in it, how much colour, and where it sits on the hue circle. So the question is never "does Dulux make Hague Blue", it is "which NCS shade is Hague Blue, and how close is it".

We answer that with a measurement rather than an opinion. Each colour is compared against the official NCS swatch its tin would be mixed to, using CIEDE2000, the formula the colour industry uses to express how different two colours look to a human eye. That is the dE column.

Why the price is the same on every row

There is no price column above, because there would be nothing to compare. The trade products are tinted to order from the same bases, so the cost does not depend on which colour you pick: £23.91 for a litre of Dulux Heritage, or £4.82 for a tester, whether you want the palest off-white or the darkest green. That is the whole mechanism behind a paint dupe. You are not buying a cheaper version of a colour, you are buying the same colour from a supply chain that prices paint by the tin rather than by the name on it.

What does change from colour to colour is the only thing worth comparing: how closely the NCS shade lands on the original. That is the fit and the dE.

Where this gets uncomfortable

Of the 281 Farrow & Ball colours we have measured, 141 land within 2 dE of the shade their tin is mixed to. That is 50%. The rest sit further out, and that is roughly half the range.

Plenty of sites would leave that out. We print it on every colour page, because the alternative is selling somebody a tin that arrives looking wrong. A colour graded "Nearest shade" is the closest standard NCS shade to the original, not a like for like match, and on a large wall in good light you will see the difference. A colour graded "Exact" you will not, even holding the two together.

What to do with this

Order the tester, not the tins. A tinted tin cannot be returned, and no table, including this one, tells you how a colour behaves on your wall at four in the afternoon in a north-facing room. Paint a square metre, look at it over a day, then buy the litres.

Every colour above links to its own page, with the full list of trade products that match it, the price of each, and the measurement behind the grade. The full Farrow & Ball range is here if the colour you want is not in the table.