The journal
Discover the Mylands Story
Discover the Mylands story and the illustrious 140-year heritage behind it: a family paint maker founded in London in 1884, still blending and tinting every colour to order at one London factory.
A tin of paint gives away very little about where it came from. Ours has come from the same corner of South London since 1884, the year John Myland opened his first shop in Lambeth. A hundred and forty years later the family still owns the company, Dominic Myland is our fourth-generation owner and CEO, and every colour is still blended and tinted to order in one London factory. This is how that shop became Britain's oldest paint manufacturer, and why it shows in the colour on your wall.
From a Lambeth shop to Britain's oldest paint maker
The first Mylands factory followed the shop, also in South London, and from that one address grew Britain's oldest family-owned paint manufacturer. Our paints and polishes now go to the Royal Household and the palaces, and to some of the most iconic buildings and homes in the UK. We have stayed a family business throughout, which is unusual in an industry consolidated around a few very large names.
In 2024 we marked 140 years of manufacturing under the same family, and that continuity is not sentimental. It means the recipes, the pigment sources and the people who mix them have been handed on rather than reinvented each time a company changed hands.
Why one factory matters when you are matching a colour
Every Mylands paint is formulated, blended and tinted to order at our factory in the heart of London. Nothing is made in bulk in one country, tinted in another and warehoused for a year; a batch is mixed when it is ordered, which keeps it fresh and keeps waste down. We oversee the whole chain, from the raw materials to the finished tin.
For anyone who has tried to touch up a wall two years after painting it, that control is the difference between an invisible repair and a patch. Every batch is mixed to the same recipe by the same hands in the same building, and Marble Matt Emulsion in particular is remarkably easy to retouch, blending in without flashing or patchiness.
Our colourmen, and what goes into the tin
Our colourmen mix using traditional techniques, with rich natural earth pigments and resins, and it is the pigment load people notice first. Marble Matt Emulsion, our signature finish, carries more pigment than any other paint on the market, which is why its colours read as deep rather than flat and shift quietly with the light.
The other ingredient is stone. Marble Matt is made with crushed Carrara marble, a by-product of the Italian marble industry, ground to a fine mineral powder that gives the surface its resilience and its faint natural texture. In practice that means a 3% sheen you can scrub clean, coverage of 15l/m² against a standard 10 or 12, and full cover in two coats where most paints need three.
Film sets, galleries and the Royal Household
Mylands paint has gone onto film and television sets across the globe, and onto the walls of institutions that ask a great deal of a finish: Marble Matt is used at Dulwich Picture Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery, where a wall takes thousands of visitors and must still accept an invisible touch-up before the next hang.
Queen Elizabeth II first granted us a Royal Warrant in 1985, for our polishes, stains and varnishes, and we have supplied the Royal Household and the palaces over the forty years since. His Majesty The King has now granted us use of the Royal Warrant in turn, an endorsement of the whole team's craftsmanship rather than of any single product. Dominic mentors for QEST, the Queen Elizabeth Scholarship Trust, because skills like these survive only if somebody teaches them.
Taking the chemistry out, keeping the colour
Making paint the way we always have does not mean making it from what we always did. We have worked for twelve years to reduce the chemicals and microplastics in our paints, and the plant-based ranges are the result; we were early pioneers of plant-based multi-surface paints, developed through the 2010s with natural fillers and a high bio-carbon content.
Since then, Olive Stone Emulsion has arrived, made with crushed olive stones from the olive oil industry for a dead matt finish with less waste; the Upcycled Collection, introduced in our 140th year, turns mis-tints and over-runs into usable shades; and Planet Mark certification now holds us to measuring and reducing our carbon emissions. The whole range is water-based and ultra-low in VOCs, at 0.1 to 0.29%.
Our factory showroom in West Norwood is open, with tours and workshops to follow. Until then, the best test of any of it is a wall: put the colour up, live with it a day, and watch what the light does to it between breakfast and dusk.
