Exterior Brick Paint Color Ideas – Paint Colors for Brick Houses

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Whether you’ve just bought your first home and want to make it your own or you’re looking to breathe some life back into your home’s exterior, painting the exterior brick of your home is a good idea. Not only is it more cost-effective compared to other options, but it’s less limiting too. Since there are so many options to choose from, we thought you’d enjoy a quick rundown of some of the best exterior brick paint color ideas out there and why you should choose them.

 

 

Why Should You Paint Your Exterior Brick?

Before we get into some good exterior brick paint color ideas, let’s cover why it’s a good idea to paint your brick home. Brick is a lot more porous than other common building materials like wood and is, therefore, more susceptible to things like moisture build-up, mold, insects, and the general build-up of dirt and grime over time.

Reasons to Paint Brick House

These unwelcomed additions to your brick structure can cause the brick to decay and break apart over time, and while this might not happen very quickly it’s easier to prevent the build-up completely than resurface a brick wall. When a brick wall is painted, these recesses are sealed up ensuring that your brick walls not only look good but are safe for years to come too!

Paint will Protect Brick

The most obvious reason for painting your home is to make it look good. Exposed brick is a great minimalist aesthetic, but it only really works indoors. Painting your home with a good quality paint that compliments the shape and style of the structure can instantly increase its curve appeal, making everyone stop and at your beautiful abode as they walk by (be sure to invest in some blinds!).

One reason to paint your home that isn’t mentioned nearly as much as it should be is that painting out exterior brick significantly reduces maintenance costs. If you decide to leave your brick exposed, you will have to clean the surface and recesses regularly to ensure that it doesn’t degrade over time. Painting ensures that you have a smooth surface to clean, which won’t pick up dirt and grime very easily either.

Test Brick Paint Colors

 

What You Should Know Before Painting Your Brick Walls

Painting bricks seems pretty beneficial, right? Objective, it is, but there are a few things you should know about painted brick before you give it a try. One of the first things that you know is that once you paint brick it can be challenging to remove, so it’s best to consider the color and whether you really want a painted brick home before you commit to it.

Painting Exterior Brick Bright Colors

You should also keep in mind that paint, at its core, is just another surface coating. This means that it can degrade over time and therefore needs to be maintained. This could mean repainting your home once a year depending on the state you live in, or it could start to peel and chip, which could look unsightly over time.

Painted Brick Maintenance

Another thing that you should keep in mind is that exposed brick is really good at hiding imperfections and dirt. With paint being a solid color, it makes it that much easier to spot bits of dirt and grime on the walls of your home. This being said, painted brick is significantly easier to clean, so it’s a bit of a trade-off, but well worth it in our opinion.

Painting your brick home also means that other exterior accents might not go well with the new color scheme, which means that you might end up changing more than the color of your house if it doesn’t suit your taste or the overall aesthetic. This is why picking the color and finish of your paint is extremely important, and shouldn’t be done on a whim.

 

 

How Do You Choose an Exterior Brick Paint Color?

Wondering how to choose exterior brick paint colors? There are a few things to consider when choosing a paint color for your exterior walls. One of the first things you should consider is what impact you want the color of your home to have not only on your home but on the overall aesthetic of the houses on your street, or even your block depending on the type of neighborhood you live in.

Choose Brick Paint Color to Suit Area

If you just want a color that makes you happy and you don’t have to appease a homeowner’s association, then go with whatever color, tone, and texture speaks to you (the ideal scenario!) However, if you enjoy keeping up with the latest trends then you should choose a color that’s easy to paint over and can mix well with your future options.

Choosing a paint for your house is important, but the cool thing about painting brick is that the coating can be painted over and even altered if you change your mind, or if trends change. Painting your entire home can be a labor-intensive process though, so we recommend avoiding the latest cool trend and choosing a color, tone, and texture that will stand the test of time.

Avoid Trendy Paint Colors for Brick

If you want something timeless but don’t want to commit to something too bland you can paint the primary surface with a fairly unassuming color and then go ahead and paint your trim pieces like your shutters or window sills with a more vibrant color. This also makes it a lot easier to update paint colors that might not age so well over time.

 

 

Exterior Brick Colors

When choosing exterior brick paint, it can be a bit daunting to choose between the sheer variety of colors available to you. This is why we have prepared a short list of some of the most common and least common exterior brick colors for your home. Be sure to check out the different shades and textures of the colors below, and to take a few samples home if possible.

Types of Brick Paint Colors

 

Popular Exterior Brick Paint Colors

The nice thing about painting the brick exterior of your home is that there are loads of brick paint colors for you to choose from. Depending on the aesthetic you have in mind there are various tones of the following colors to choose from too, so while it is possible (and more convenient) to shop online, why not head to the store and check out some paint samples? You can always order the color online and it might even be a bit cheaper.

Painting Brickwork White

 

Exterior Gray

These days, minimalist aesthetics are all the rage, and the nice thing about them is that they tend to be timeless, neat, and seamless. Gray can seem like a real downer of a color at first, but if you take the time to explore some different shades of gray you might find that certain shades are quite calming and neutral, which might be exactly what you’re looking for in an exterior paint for your home.

Gray Brick House Color Idea

One of the many cool things about using gray as a primary color for your home’s exterior is that it makes it look modern instantly. This makes it a great way to modernize your brick home, and considering that the average age of a home in the Northern US is around 90 years old, this is a cheap and inexpensive way to breathe some life back into dated brick.

 

Exterior Blue and Green

If gray isn’t really your speed and you’re in the market for more conventional colors to paint brick houses you should consider a nice blue or green color pallet. These colors are more accessible and give a brick exterior a more natural feel compared to blacks and grays, which might suit the shape of your home and overall aesthetic better.

Restful Green Brick Color

Blue and green are also more natural colors that won’t conflict with natural accents like gardens or flower beds, so if you have a green finger, these colors are a good option for your brick exterior. Since blue and green are both found in nature if you are having a hard time finding colors to go with your green and blue you have the option of using brown earthy colors to supplement and highlight your green and blue color scheme.

If you still can’t decide on blue or green, you should consider using a hybrid of the two colors like a light teal or royal blue to take some of the intensity away. You won’t have as wide of variety of textures if you choose to go with these colors, but if you choose a paint type that’s easy to clean (like enamel), your finish will be easy to maintain.

 

Exterior Beige and White

When most people think of white paint, they think of a bland face brick exterior to what was once an illustrious home, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Both white and beige are excellent choices for your brick exterior because they offer a clean, sophisticated look to pretty much any surface they’re used on.

Beige Painted Exterior Brick Color Idea

Another thing to keep in mind when it comes to white and beige paint is that there are many different tones to choose from. Darker tones of white and beige typically have the same effect that light brown and light gray paints have, giving you a calming feel to your brick walls while ensuring they provide a neat and sophisticated feel.

The trick when working with light colors is to explore the different tones and textures. You might be surprised at the sheer variety of options such simple colors can offer your brick walls, and you might even find it a bit challenging to choose one once you’ve seen a couple of them. This being said, don’t dismiss colors that are typically perceived to be “bland” as they often have the most to offer.

 

Less Common Colors to Paint Brick Houses

Don’t have a homeowner’s association to deal with? Don’t like the usual grays and whites that other homeowners tend to go with? Do you want to stand out and really make your home pop? Well, do we have some colors for you! Below are some of the less common but equally good paint colors for your brick home that could very well end up turning some heads for all the right reasons.

Unusual Exterior Brick Paint Colors

 

Pale Gray

While this might be more common in the industrial chick of big city apartments it’s also a pretty common site in modern suburbia too. This color is understated, yet elegant, and it allows to shape and contours of your home to speak for themselves. In the last couple of years, gray has exploded in popularity among new homeowners looking to modernize their properties, and food good reason.

Light Gray Exterior Brick Paint Color

Light grays are instantly calming visually and tend to look great on both sunny days and when things get a bit cloudy. The color is simple, relatively cheap, and readily available, and it works well with both red brick and any other type of stonework your home consists of. If you’re looking for a color that screams simple, yet visually pleasing, you can’t go wrong with pale gray.

 

Stone Bronze

Is this a weird recommendation? Maybe, but we did let you know that these were less common choices. We also mentioned that they look good, and we’d never lie to you! Bronze not only makes for great little ornaments and furnishings, but it can make a great color for your brick home too, but it’s typically lighter than the bronze you’re probably thinking about.

Stone and Bronze Brick Colors

Bronze can be paired with little additions like cute porch lamps and even vintage deck chairs to present an authentic old-timey feel to your home. You don’t have to use bronze on your brick either, you can pair bronze painted wood features with exposed brick to really make the stone pop and bring attention to certain parts of your home.

 

Light Tone Black

As far as painting brick exterior ideas go, brick is pretty out there, even for us. If done tastefully, black can be used to color block certain parts of your residence and bring attention to parts of it coated in a lighter color. If done incorrectly, kids might be calling give your home “Dracula’s house” when Halloween rolls around. The trick then is moderation and proper planning.

Black Painted Brick Idea

Why is black such a great color? Well, when done correctly black can accentuate the lines of your home, and if you have a modern build, this can do wonders as it shows off the actual architecture without making the paint do all the work visually. Plus, having an all-black home next to your neighbor’s boring old beige one makes you seem like the cooler homeowner.

 

Exterior Pewter

Looking for a more calming tone when contemplating painting brick exterior ideas? Maybe something that won’t make your home look like the home of a Disney villain? Well, then pewter might be exactly what you’re looking for! Pewter resembles a really light grayish-brown, but without the same intensity that brown hues often bring to painted brick.

Pewter Exterior Brick Paint Color

Pewter is an especially good option if you have a home with loads of wooden trim pieces, and if those pieces are either lighter or darker than the trim it can bring some much-needed attention to the finer details of the structure. Pewter seems to be a bit cooler than the black and gray hues in recent years, so why not hop on the bandwagon?

 

Blue Slate

You might have an argument with onlookers about whether this is blue or gray, and the answer is that it’s actually both. Slate blue is a stone-like, calming blue that looks like a conventional gray with a light undertone lurking just beneath the surface. If you don’t want to go all-in with a modern aesthetic, this is a great way to modernize your old one.

Blue-Gray Exterior Brick Paint Color

We feel like this one is arguably the best color to paint a brick house because it doesn’t make you choose between a conventionally bland color and something so modern that it might not fit the architecture of your older home. This being said, slate blue comes in a variety of tones and textures, so be sure to check all of them out before committing to one.

 

Earthy Green

This might be a tricky one to pull off depending on what’s available at your local hardware store and what idea you have for the color in your head. Like beige and slate blue, this earthy green hue has the potential to create a very cozy, homely feel that goes well with other nature-based colors and textures on the exterior of your home.

Painting Exterior Brickwork Green

This type of green is usually used to paint accessories or trim pieces like windowsills around the home, but in recent years more and more people have been using it to paint the brick walls of their homes. This might not be your first thought when trying to come up with the best color to paint a brick house but it’s definitely one to consider.

 

 

What Do You Need to Paint Exterior Brick?

You don’t need an awful lot of tools to paint your exterior brick walls. All that you really need is the paint of your choice, a roller, some paint brushes for the trim pieces, your primer, a paint tray, and some tarp to protect your driveway and/or lawn. The most important thing to do in the preparation for painting your wall is to ensure you give it a good clean either by hand or with a pressure washer if you think that your wall can take it without causing any damage.

Painting Brick with Roller

You don’t have to paint your wall the old-fashioned way though. It can be time-consuming, so if you’re able to hire or purchase a paint sprayer you’ll save yourself a lot of time and elbow grease when painting your exterior walls (or any surface for that matter). However, if you don’t have any experience using a sprayer it could be a pretty steep learning curve.

 

Should You Paint Your Exterior Brick Yourself or Hire a Professional?

Much like anything else in life, the choice of whether to hire a professional or do it yourself comes down to a few factors. Do you have enough time to get it done yourself? Do you have the skill level to get it done on your own? Do you have all of the tools that you’ll need to do a good job? Can you get it done on your own, or do you need another pair of hands?

Professional Painting Brick Exterior

While hiring a professional eliminates pretty much all of the aforementioned scenarios, it does not account for cost. It can be cheaper to paint exterior walls yourself because you won’t be paying anyone for labor, but doing all of the labor on your own can be time-consuming and you might end up doing a poor job if you’re overwhelmed.

 

 

Now that you know why painting your exterior brick walls is such a good idea, what some of the most popular brick painting ideas are, whether it’s a good idea to paint a brick wall by yourself or hire a professional, and what you’ll need to paint a brick wall it’s time for you to get out there and put your newfound knowledge to the test. Remember to check out all the variations and textures of a given color before making your final decision and to always wear the appropriate personal protective gear when working with aerosolized paint.

 

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Is It a Good Idea to Paint Brick?

Before you go and look at some brick painting ideas, you’ve probably wondered if it’s a good idea to paint your brick surface in the first place. Objectively speaking, painted brick not only lasts longer but is less susceptible to damage by exterior forces like rain, wind, and sunshine.

 

Is Painting Brick a Mistake?

Is painting brick a mistake? Well, it can certainly go wrong if done incorrectly, but considering that the point of painting your brick is to make your home look good and make it easier to maintain, it is a good idea. You should always ensure that your exterior brick is clean, dry, and adequately primed before you begin the painting process.

 

Does Painted Brick Hold Up?

Does painted brick hold up? This depends on what you expect from your paint. Paint is inherently perishable, so unlike exposed brick, it will need to be maintained, cleaned, and touched up over time. However, even though paint traps moisture, which can cause paint to peel over time, modern paints designed for exterior brick are extremely durable and don’t require all that much maintenance.