Farrow and Ball Railings vs Little Greene Lamp Black for a Deep Charcoal Front Door
Both read as near-black on a paint chip. On a south-facing door in July they part company by mid-afternoon: Railings pulls toward navy-blue in direct sun, Lamp Black holds a warmer near-charcoal that leans slightly brown. That single shift decides which one people notice from the pavement and which one just reads as dark.
Why the same swatch behaves differently at 3pm
Railings (No.31) carries a blue-black undertone. Lamp Black (No.85) sits warmer, closer to a soft charcoal that goes faintly brown as the day drops. Put both on the actual door, not a card taped to the frame, and the split shows up under direct light within an hour.
A north-facing door barely separates them. Flat light suppresses undertone, so both read as a deep dark grey most of the day and only the sheen level tells them apart. South and west faces are where the choice matters. Late sun hits Railings and the blue lifts, which some people love against warm brick and others find cold beside a cream render. Lamp Black under the same light stays quieter. It does not announce itself.
Brush a foot-square patch of each on the closing edge of the door, prime included, and leave it three days before you look properly. Morning, midday, and that low evening angle all tell you something different. The paint that looked identical in the tin at the merchant will have already picked sides by the second evening.
Sheen decides more than the colour code
Farrow and Ball Exterior Eggshell gives Railings a low satin that hides brush marks and reads soft. Little Greene runs Lamp Black through its Intelligent Exterior Eggshell, which sits at a similar sheen but films slightly harder in my experience, better on a door that gets slammed by kids and post.
Go full gloss and both colours change character. A high-gloss black door throws a mirror-bright reflection of whatever is opposite, so on a narrow terrace you end up looking at the parked cars across the street every time the sun moves. Eggshell kills that. It also forgives an uneven old door. Fill and sand a six-panel Victorian door badly and gloss will telegraph every ripple down the stile.
The edge case nobody mentions: a very dark eggshell on a door that swings in full afternoon sun runs hot. Dark surfaces hit 60 to 70 degrees C in summer, timber moves, and cheap filler cracks along the joints by the second season. Lamp Black in the harder Intelligent film copes marginally better with that thermal cycling. Neither paint fixes a door that was hung with the grain running the wrong way.
Prep is where the money actually goes
Strip back to sound timber or sound old paint. If you find flaking down to bare wood on an older door, the bare patches need a wood primer, and the surrounding sound paint needs a light key with 240 grit so the topcoat grabs.
Skip this and the finish looks perfect for eight months. Then a hairline flake lifts at the bottom rail where rain sits, and it spreads. On a door that has had a dozen coats over eighty years, sometimes the honest move is a full strip with a heat gun and scraper, then two coats of primer, because you cannot trust what is under layer eleven.
For filled repairs on knots and old screw holes, a shellac-based knot sealer stops resin bleeding through your lovely dark topcoat as an amber halo six weeks later. That halo is the single most common complaint on dark doors and it is entirely a prep failure, not a paint failure. On plaster reveals around the frame, if you are painting those too, an acrylic sealer like Zinsser Gardz locks down chalky or previously distempered surfaces so the eggshell does not flash patchy.
Roughly: prep and primer eat two-thirds of the hours on a door like this. The two topcoats are the easy part. People buy the expensive paint and rush the sanding, then blame the paint.
The short version on cost
A 2.5 litre tin of either exterior eggshell covers one door and frame with two coats and leaves enough for touch-ups. At current pricing they are within a few pounds of each other, so cost is not the deciding factor here.
Application, weather windows, and the mistakes that show
Two thin coats beat one thick one every time on a dark colour. Dark pigment loads heavy and a thick coat sags at the panel bottoms, leaving a curtain you only see once it has cured. Load the brush lightly, lay off in the direction of the grain, and stop fiddling. Both paints have a workable open time of maybe ten to fifteen minutes in mild weather before the surface skins and you drag it.
Weather is the real gatekeeper. Below 8 degrees C the exterior eggshell will not cure properly and stays soft for days, picking up dust and insects. Above 25 in direct sun the surface skins before you have laid off and you get lap marks where wet met dry. The window most of the year is early morning after the dew has burned off or late afternoon out of direct sun. A door in shade paints far more forgivingly than one baking at noon.
Use a good synthetic filament brush for these waterborne eggshells, not a natural bristle meant for old oil gloss. A 50mm angled sash brush handles panels and the 63mm does the stiles and rails. Cut the panels first, working from the moulding outward, then the horizontals, then the verticals so your final laying-off strokes all run top to bottom on the long members.
The brushwork mistake that ruins dark doors: overworking a patch that has started to skin. You see a thin bit, go back into it, and the brush drags the skinning film into ridges that catch light forever. If you missed coverage, leave it. Get it on the second coat. Dark eggshell is unforgiving of second-guessing in a way a pale colour never is because every ridge throws a shadow.
Letterplate, knocker, and numerals come off before you paint, not masked around. Masking a dark colour around brass always leaves a fuzzy black edge on the metal and a paint ridge where the tape sat. Twenty minutes with a screwdriver saves an hour of picking dried paint off a knocker with a cotton bud.
Recoat timing differs slightly between the two. Both want overnight between coats in cool damp conditions even if the tin says four hours, because a dark waterborne film that feels touch-dry can still be soft underneath, and the second coat drags the first if you rush it.
Which one against which house
Red or orange stock brick, the warm Victorian sort: Lamp Black holds against it without fighting. Railings can go slightly discordant, the blue clashing with the warm brick under evening sun. Grey render, limestone, or a cool modern facade: Railings comes alive, the blue-black picking up the coolness and looking deliberate and crisp.
A door under a deep porch or in permanent shade barely reveals either undertone, so pick on sheen and film hardness instead, and Lamp Black in the Intelligent finish edges it for a door that takes physical knocks. A fully exposed south door in a hot spot: expect either colour to fade toward a chalky matte within four or five years and plan to refresh the topcoat, dark exterior colours simply do not hold their depth outdoors as long as mid-tones do.
The thing the paint charts will not tell you is how much your specific brick throws colour back onto the door at dusk. That reflected light shifts a near-black more than any tin ever will, so the only honest test is a real patch on the real door watched across a real day. What happens to Railings on a north-east door that gets thirty minutes of hard morning sun and then flat light all afternoon is a question worth answering on your own timber before you commit two litres to it.
