Hi all, looking to paint outside walls before winter. House is one story which is good so no height problems.
So which paint? Have looked at Bricos & I’m pretty underwhelmed. Would also quite like a colour for a change (not beige). Saw on other forum that someone had coloured crepi & painted house with that???
Any ideas appreciated!
Many thanks T
Depending on where you are and what sort of house it is, you may need to talk to the Mairie before changing the colour very much. We have friends on a new-ish estate and those houses have to be kept in similar colours 
I agree about the limited colour range for paint though - we have been trying to paint garden furniture something other than brown for some while now… 
We have just collected a large tin of Swedish linseed oil based paint for our wooden external shutters, in a blue-grey colour similar to what we have for metal doors and windows elsewhere
Where did you get it, Jane?
I noticed that @SuePJ seems to be able to get all sorts of interesting paint colours in her area but around here it’s brown, beige and fawn with an occasional foray into dark grey… very depressing!
We bought some German outside wall paint from Lidl when it was in stock. It did the job on the garage and other concrete surfaces of the house, and with surprisingly good coverage. Unfortunately, it only came in white, but that was fine for us as its the colour we already had on the walls !
Hi Jayne, Could you let me know where you bought the paint - it sounds lovely!
many thanks T
We bought it online from here….
(We got some Swedish paint for shutters and cheaper stuff for less exposed external wood).
And it arrived at our tabac the following day. Amazon eat your heart out!
More expensive than Mr Brico but if the quality is better and we never have to do it again then that’s fine. The last lot has only lasted 6 years.
We were going to make it up ourselves - which you can do using linseed oil and pigments etc (I have a recipe) but we are about to go on holiday so need to get painting asap so can get the shutters back on the house before we go so decided to spend the extra.
Peinture à la chaux might be suitable for you….
Jane is that the Swedish farine paint? Or a Swedish brand you are talking about? I have all the info for making this and just need to order it (have already bought a big old pot to make it in!).
If it’s a mix of linseed oil, flour, savon noir etc etc then that same stuff. We are just being supremely lazy and buying this batch ready made - it was such a faff getting the shutters off we need to do it now. We have the ingredients to make up another batch for the rest of the external wood.
Most of the big brico have a paint mixing service. If you pick from the RAL colour chart - they can mix any from outside housepaint to interior paints. We had our paints mixed, smooth masonry, green for shutters (exterior wood) and fences (metal). Not the cheapest option, but paints are appropriate for French climate and environmentally safe.
Only non french paint we are buying is white eggshell - we have not found a french equivalent yet.
Yes, that is useful if you want big brand paint. We prefer a more environmentally gentle solution, and if it works in Sweden it will work for us here in the mountains. My haircutter has done a garden shed this way (very cheaply!) and looks great after already several years.
The joy of being retired is that generally we have the time to source less mainstream and more ethical options. (Environmentally safe doesn’t mean ideal, just that it won’t kill anything)
Dulux Weather Shield.
Used it, having expensively colour matched the original stuff, it barely lasted a season. Possibly one of the brands which falls into the “not as good as it used to be” category or maybe just not up to Breton weather.
Repainted with Leyland trade stuff bought from Toolstation (sadly, they have different stuff from the French store) - so far much better. The main disadvantage is that the colours on offer are white or white and I “wasn’t allowed” to get pigment to add.
I agree. Dulux doesn’t cope with out weather here which can change 30 degrees in 24 hours.
I used it years ago in the UK and it was OK, I used it more recently and was much less impressed - possibly they switched to a low VOC formulation which are rarely as good.
The failure in France was possibly multifactorial - I paid closer attention to prep with the Leyland stuff for one thing.
I made the mistake of bringing a top quality white paint from England to do my house. Apparently, the locals all prefer an off white/cream colour. I hadnt realised, honestly.
How to make friends an insult people,eh. 
In this area, the tradition definitely seems to be various shades of brown (woodwork) through to cream (walls) but lately (because of Covid) quite a few people have moved in from Paris and suchlike and the trend has gone from browns to greys. Both terribly gloomy in my view ! When I first painted my front door green rather than brown about 25 years ago, one of my neighbours was visibly shocked and told me I’d painted it in the wrong colour
Is it a “trend”, or is it a change of policy by the mairie?
I know that some communes are very strict about the colour and even the shade of colour that can be used externally.
I think it is actually a trend in the area covered by our mairie. In the case of some new lotissements in the town it is certainly a strict rule but it only seems to apply to those (speaking to a neighbour who had a house built on a lotissement and moved from our little hamlet). I realise that this will vary from mairie to mairie though…
I should also have mentioned perhaps that a particularly hideous shade of bright pink for external walls has always been popular in this district and continues to be so - mercifully not in huge numbers 