YesColours Emulsion Review

YesColours is a relatively new paint brand to hit the UK market. The brand itself has a designer / luxury feel to it. They’re described as environmentally friendly, low-VOC, child safe and vegan. Their website has a vibrant and modern feel to it, and some of the colours they offer seem to mirror that. It all feels bold and exciting.

However, I’m a Professional Decorator, and I wanted to sit down and write a subjective review on YesColours Matt Emulsion as a paint product in practical terms.

This is a fully water-based emulsion, available online in a handful of stylish colours. It can be applied to interior walls and ceilings via brush and roller, or airless sprayer. Bare plaster should be primed with a diluted coat of YesColours Emulsion, which means there is no need for a specialist primer. This paint is touch dry in around 2 hours, and re-coat in 4 hours.

The product itself is made to order, which means there can be a slight colour variation between orders. Although I’m reviewing YesColours Matt Emulsion, you can also order eggshell, gloss and satin.

My YesColours Emulsion Review

Right, let’s get down to my personal opinion on this paint. I used it recently in a flat, and I wasn’t expecting a great performance if I’m honest. After all, a lot of expensive paints don’t perform as well as their trade counterparts, and being confronted with a “designer vegan paint” didn’t fill me with confidence.

Unless otherwise stated, YesColours Emulsion comes in squeezy bags, which are terrible. I assume they do this to cut down on the plastic packaging to make it more environmentally friendly, but I think the downside counteracts its initial aim. You can’t put the emulsion back into the bag when you’ve done painting for the day, so you end up wasting it. As you can’t merely wash paint down the sink, you’re left scratching your head to find an environmentally responsible way to dispose of the waste paint.

That said, any unopened bags you have left at the end of the project can be returned to YesColours, who will even cover the cost of shipping. This does indeed cut down on waste, and it shows that YesColours are one of the few brands that puts the environment ahead of profit on its list of priorities. Great to see!

Another thing to mention is YesColours is currently phasing in proper containers. All recycled material, but you can actually get the paint back in after you’ve finished using it. These will be available very soon.

The bags are literally the only bad thing I can find to say about this emulsion. When I used it, I went from using a premium trade vinyl matt in one room, to using YesColours in the next. The difference was absolutely staggering! Even though I was comparing it to a premium trade product, the YesColours Emulsion was a million times better.

Out of all the emulsion paints I have ever used, YesColours is probably the easiest to apply. It’s quite thin, and it sits lovely on top of a wall. Your brush and roller just glide over the surface! This not only makes using this product enjoyable, but you’ll find it easier to strike straight lines, or achieve an even coat.

That isn’t the only thing that stands out! Even though YesColours Matt Emulsion is thin, the opacity is unreal. I wanted to give it a proper test, so I sprayed a wall with WRX Aerosol in black before painting over it with YesColours emulsion. It covered in two coats without issue! I don’t know any other emulsion that could do that!

The next thing to talk about is the overall finish. There are absolutely no defects when using this paint! No orange peel, no flashing, no picture framing. The sheen level is low, and the colour is deep and luxurious. Everything about the overall aesthetics is flawless!

Review Summary

Final Thoughts

As I said a few paragraphs up, I wasn’t expecting a lot from this paint at all. Vegan paint in gimmicky bags sold online at an inflated price etc. However, that really isn’t the case. What YesColours have developed is a very premium quality, eco friendly paint that performs unbelievably well. It’s very impressive to be honest. I’d happily recommend this paint to anyone, and it’s a product I will use regularly moving forward.

Click here to visit their website.

A Video Demo