What You Need to Know Before Painting Brick

olldbobbi Good, informative article. Question - let's say you like the look of natural brick, but the brick is not looking so good. Is there a particular stain that could be used to renew the color?

hometipster The most important thing really is to make sure the brickwork is clean and free from any loose debris. You can also use a sealant prior painting brick and this is good for both interior and exterior brickwork.

Fine Art & Portraits by Laurel Good tips

Suzanne DeTurris Any advice on removing paint from brick? We just bought a new home and the former owners thought painting the fireplace a red brick color would be a good idea...then they painted the mortar grey....The result is reminiscent of the faux cardboard Christmas fireplaces from the 60's. I have tried using the Dumond stipper and it made more of a mess. HELP.. other than adding a elf to the shelf for comic relief I am scraping bit by bit and overwhelmed...

gailflynn51 How can you get rid of spots of paint on red brick. (We are renovating a restaurant wall)

CHISM BROTHERS PAINTING Suzanne, Stripping of brick is very difficult because it is so porous. You can talk to your local Benjamin Moore or Sherwin Williams about a product called Peel-Away and see I'd that will help. We've used it on plenty of surfaces with good results. But it is hard to remove all of the paint without many teadious hours of manual labor. Sometimes it is best to get a quote on removal and replacing when you think about the hours of stripping off the paint.

ltcroucher I'm thinking of putting tiles over my brick fireplace. Has anybody done this before and is it advisable?

sooper_mom Is it possible to use an electric sander to remove paint from interior brick work?

janeberitmarie I couldn't stand the brick fireplace in our living room, big, dark and dirty looking, so I filled all the joints and stuccoed it, then glazed it to soften the color and now it looks like a fireplace in a Southwestern home and I love it!

frankiesmom I used a product called brick-a-new to paint the brick around my fireplace. I'm not sure that this photo does it justice, but the mason who came to build out my hearth though he was going to have to match natural brick. By adding different colors to the brick it looks more real then just painting one color! You can see in this picture the color of the original brick (on the sides) before i painted it to match the rest of the hearth.

farm2011 What are the colors used on the exterior of the the brick house? Thanks

heih It makes me mad to see painted brick. If you absolutely have to do something to it, why don't you stain it? Just my two cents.

farm2011 Generally agree about not painting brick but in this case I'm only looking for the color scheme of the house in the picture. I have a wood frame home.

janeberitmarie It's actually the fireplace inside the living room, not the chimney.

CHISM BROTHERS PAINTING sooper_mom I wouldn't recommend using a sander to remove the paint off of brick. Brick is very brittle and could cause it to chip. A chemical stripper is your best option. Sometimes you can use a bead/sand blaster. But this too can take a layer off the brick.

PaintColorHelp.com Dallas A very helpful and timely article. Having seen numerous painted homes, I have to say, I'm just adamantly opposed to painting exterior brick in most cases. It may look fine the first time or two you paint. But after that, you start to lose the texture of the brick (and especially on vintage homes, the texture is part of what makes it interesting.) After some years, it just becomes a big, glopped over mess - almost slick. And once you've painted, there's really no going back. Even Peel Away won't budge paint if it's been there a long time on old, porous brick.

marthaquilts What about white washing the brick around your fireplace inside? I've heard about this, and you still see some of the brick's varying colors. You can just lighten the color of your brick this way.

lovemykitchennow I don't really like painted brick, I chose the lighter color from my brick and painted the living room walls, that made a great difference in the appearence of my brick fireplace the previous owners had the walls painted a "Pinkish Sand" color and that made the entire room and fireplace look dirty and dingy. I also don't like painted trim moldings either, I like the "wood" grain of stained trim.

nellycrowe Consider a lime wash. Wash can be tinted and works for interior and exterior brick. I covered up some hideous brick on a 40's fireplace. There are several sites on-line with recipes for a lime wash. Salmon Bay Sand and Gravel here in Seattle gave me a free hand out with several options including one recipe with molasses!

The knotty pine was originally high gloss orange-brown. After careful sanding, I treated it with a solution of water and baking soda for a quick old wood silver color.

PaintColorHelp.com Dallas Gailflynn51: I had this problem on my exterior. I'm not sure if this would work for you, but here's what I ultimately did. After trying numerous chemicals, pressure washing, and Googling for solutions, I couldn't make any real headway on removing stark white paint from dark red and burgundy scratch-face brick. Finally, with reservations, I decided to try matching the brick colors and dabbing paint over the splotches. I say colors because most bricks are a variegated blend. I chose the 3 main tones and found the nearest fan deck color. (The obviously preferred method is to take extra bricks into the paint store for a custom match - but my house is 85 years old, so not an option for me.) I slightly adjusted the formulas to get what I hoped would be even closer to the brick color. Two of the three worked pretty well; the third color I altered on site by mixing in drops of the other two shades. I dabbed over the white spots with a foam brush and faded out so as not to leave an obvious line anywhere. From a distance, you can't see the touch-up at all. Even up close, you have to study hard to see any variation. I was pleasantly surprised and while not 100% perfect, it is nevertheless the best that area has ever looked, even to my critical eye. If you try this, be sure to use FLAT paint. An artist or color consultant could help you with matching the colors, if this is not your forte. Good luck!

ppharion Love the artical but I have a stone fire place and the natural stone is a cold looking cement color. The mantel is concrete. Can this be painted? Know matter what color samples I have tried on the wall around the fire place it either makes it look dirty or makes it stand out like a sore thumb. HELP!

Megan Schneider What would you do with a home like this? We are purchasing a family home and thinking about painting the brick. We know that the brick was painted red at some point. What would you do with it?

cathyleemarkham @ bobbi p---You can use artist's acrylics and apply them undiluted. Test your colors right on the brick and adjust. I recommend raw sienna, burnt sienna, white and black. Play around with proportions, adding only tiny amounts of white and black to tone down the natural hues. Apply with a fairly dry brush, varying each brick if you wish!

Choismith Associates Inc. itcroutcher - I covered a brick fireplace with marble for a client, you can see result at www.choismith.com. Worked pretty well, you have to be careful to let the mastic dry a lot as it is necessary to really "glop" it on sometimes.

Henry Brick Company check Prosoco products for various cleaning needs they have restoration cleaners and graffiti remover.

MAGDALENA GLEN-SCHIENEMAN, AIA The fireplace surrounds when painted with flammable paints are a fire hazard. Please always check before painting - the functional (and code) reason for noncombustible hearth and surround is safety.

cutout Whitewashing looks better, IMO, and can be power-washed off later if it's unappealing.

linwal48 I have a brick fireplace that we no longer use. I want to stain it but am having problems finding a stain for brick and also how to do that. I have seen stain mentioned 2 times and have never seen any instructions for doing that. Can you give me some advice?

gacarnegie What if you just really hate the look of red brick?

I purchased a home built in the 50s with an ornamental brick half wall (it's just on the front of the house) and with an architecturally boring fireplace. I'm torn between removing all the exterior brick when I re-side the house this fall or painting it.

I'm thinking of tiling over the brick around the chimney when I have a high efficiency iron gas stove installed .

I know some people will say to white wash it or stain it but honestly I just don't like red, rust or orange colors at all. is there a stain that will make it gray or a blue based brown? That's the only way I'd keep it.

cutout This is what I used, and a dye or tint can be added to it -

http://www.askthebuilder.com/whitewash-recipe/

linwal48 Thank you so much Vanessa. I went to that site and found several suggestions.

foyer I have really sad cement grey brick on the outside of a little house that otherwise has a ton of charm. I would like to stain the brick rather than paint it but not finding much information. II need to do something that is low maintenance and won't peel so staining seemed smarter than paint. Anyone out there able to help?

norgen Would this be a good candidate to paint. I don't think I like this brick - its a non working fireplace in our bonus room

loishapi PAINT is the creative pauper's best friend. In my world view that red brick is one of western civilizations greatest faux pas, ergo living with it is not an option.
Here is an old fresher-upper... 1955 Bungalow.
BEFORE LEFT. AFTER, RIGHT.

Suzanne DeTurris I detest painted brick...In my opinion It should be done ONLY as a last resort. Why not try to reface it with a stone or tile?

bojaby Question. I live in a 4 level split level home. The garden level is half above and half below ground. The below ground has foundation that looks like brick but is actually large slabs of concrete I think with brick pattern on the interior. I want to paint this the same color as the drywall on the top half to make the room look taller. I know I could drywall over this foundation but don't want the expense. Does anyone have suggestions on how to approach this? The brick is off-white and I had planned to fill a few cracks and use a paint sprayer with Behr Premium or Premium Plus paint. Thanks for any insight offered.

Suzanne DeTurris How about a beadboard running around the concrete section with a molding up to the drywall?

linwal48 Suzanne, you suggested an overlay or tile instead of painted brick. I have thought about faux stone but don't know if it would be too heavy. Is there a light-weight faux stone to apply over the brick?

4isablessing What should i do with our brick fireplace. It's not chipping and it's in pretty good shape.. I think it makes my room hard to decorate and makes it dark.

Choismith Associates Inc. Linwal48, I have faced a couple of fireplaces with marble, and if the structure is strong enough to support brick, the added weight of 1/2 inch thick stone is not normally a problem. And I agree with Suzanne, painted brick really ages poorly and almost always looks bad after a year or so.

Sandy White Primm I saw a brick house once that someone had added paint to some of the bricks on the corners to make it look like a mixture of brick/stone. Any idea how this is done?

lavc To ppharion ... There's alot of fancy ideas here but I took the easy route for an ugly stone fireplace . It was a really ugly sandstone fireplace in Santa Fe , the good sandstones were used on the patio/courtyard and it appeared that they had used their rejects on the nice big fireplace ??!! The stones were (honestly) covered with cement water as if the cement truck had dumped it's waste on them , grey cement slip all over beigy-pink sandstone - horrible . I simply decided on a rich creamy off white color of interior latex satin finish paint that was similar to the wall color and I painted the fireplace . It turned out beautiful and if soot starts to get on it , just wash it or repaint it every couple years to make it nice again . Everyone doesn't have the time or money for fancy treatments and good old paint is a magic answer . And , I respect other's opinions about not painting brick but they haven't seen the ugly bricks I have seen in houses , paint is sometimes the only answer .

beth barger I have a brick patio and the grout is coming out in several places. My brick is fading as well. Should I fix the grout and then stain over the whole patio? Or would foot traffic wear off the stain?

kryl0n Those considering removing paint from brick, can simply use a soda blaster. A simple, home user kit may be purchased from harbor freight web store. Baking soda will remove any paint, scaling, or any other funky stuff, w/I removing much the natural look of the brick.

momstar I posted this question on another discussion, but this one seems more active. I have painted my living room: red fireplace, gold insert, and beige panels. Here is the final result. What do you think? We still have to replace the carpet, and we are not sure what to go with, wood, tile or berber carpet?

Choismith Associates Inc. I see a pool in the background, so I would eliminate carpet. Tile is pretty hard, so my vote is for hardwood. I have had good feedback from clients when installing engineered hardwood.

lyrics1967 janeberitmarie My husband and I are wanting to do the same thing. Do have any before and after pictures you can share? Thanks so much.

usernamedebbie Against all advise I painted the brick on my home. It was brick in center and white siding- the white all over united the look and it was stunning. It has lasted 15 years with no sign of peeling - we used a non transparent stain - went on with ease . Did the same treatment to the brick hearth fireplace which using the stain took 45 minutes