Top tier quality, incredible looks, long life, and awesome durability. These features are the goals that some paint companies strive for when making new products, and they’re the terms people use to describe the products of Fine Paints of Europe. If a product carries the FPoE label, it’s a great product, with no exceptions. Fine Paints of Europe is loved by home owners and contractors alike; with much of the brand’s following coming from those at the top of the knowledge and experience ladder.
The real cost of paint
A lot of consumers are inclined to feel that an item that’s premium or expensive as one that’s fragile. This may be so for some goods, but this is not the case with high end paints. All things being equal, a more “expensive” paint will look better, be more durable, and last longer than a cheaper paint. Further, thinking past stage 1 of the painting process leads to a different conclusion about what’s considered “cheap” and “expensive” in paints:
-With few exceptions a large majority of the expenditures in a painting project will be in the prep/setup and labor costs.
-An “expensive” paint is going to be more durable and longer lasting. An excellent paint like FPoE will last several years more than alternatives.
-It makes sense to annualize the total costs of the project (including the costly labor and setup) over the life of the paint, as the results do not last for an infinite amount of time! (For “cheap” paints, they may not last long at all.)
-The longer lasting paint has a cheaper cost per yer of life and thus better value long term, making FPoE is a smart investment
There are actually contractors who opt for the cheapest paint they can get their hands on for 3 reasons:
1) They can underbid other contractors to win the job
2) They will be back sooner to repaint, locking in a future job that isn’t long from now
3) The homeowner doesn’t suspect a thing!
Hollandlac:
There are several high quality paints available today, but the best gloss paint is far and away FPE’s Hollandlac. It bears repeating: Hollandlac brilliant is the best gloss you can buy on the market today, period. If I may say so myself, I would say it’s their “bread and butter”. Why was it formulated to be so excellent, to be a marine quality paint? That root of that answer is an interesting one:
In Europe, when people move from one house to another they take their kitchens with them. Kitchen cabinets come off of the walls to find a new home. These kitchen cabinets are treated as precious items, investments that are to last a long time. They’re often coated with Fine Paints of Europe’s paint.
Hollandlac is also available in their “Classic European Colors” in factory tinted .75L containers. Why is this worth mentioning, what is significant about it?
-All things being equal, colors being tinted from the factory makes a stronger paint.
-Using tintable bases is a compromise. Having bases means tint is added at the retailer level to arrive to a color.
A paint store only has to carry 2-4 bases to make those colors, and they can make custom colors. This makes sense for warehousing reasons, as well as convenience to the customer.
-With readymade colors, a dealer has to have sufficient stock on hand to meet demand, and the warehouse space to hold that. They also have to select/predict the colors they believe customers will want.
-If a paint is tinted from the factory, different tints with different properties can be used. Many of them are stronger materials. As a result, one substantive difference visible to the customer – is that FPE readymade gallons hold up better in sunlight than do domestic normal bases.
Paint features vs VOCs:
In the past few decades, regulations and customer requests have pushed paint manufacturers to lower and lower VOC products. Lower VOCs usually means less odor, but it has made for performance trade-offs. It’s hard to make a low VOC paint perform like a high VOC paint, in the same way that it is hard to ask a cook to make the tastiest dinner they can – after the best half of their spices and seasonings are declared off limits. It’s not impossible and it can be conquered with creativity, but it’s still very difficult! Some of the first lower VOC paints did not perform well, and even today their performance is not exactly equal to higher VOC paints in the same price bracket, but over time these offerings have improved dramatically. FPoE’s VOC friendly paints are a success in creativity, their low VOC paints, Eurolux and Eco are absolutely top notch. Today, Eurolux actually accounts for more than half of FPoE’s total sales.
Primers:
Succinctly stated: The oil primers really are the best primers you can get your hands on, period. Check out this bit of information from FPoE’s website:
Fine Paints Of Europe Oil Primer can remain unpainted for up to twelve months before receiving “finish” paint. This compares with the normal window of 30 days recommended by most manufacturers.
Ready to try FPoE? You can order their products from us at their section on our webstore!