Our neighborhood is made of ranches, splits, and 2 stories, built in the late 50s-early 60s, with at least the first level clad in brick. For the past few years, the trend when rehabbing houses has been to paint the brick. Usually white, taupe, or grey.
I tend to think painted brick less attractive than most “natural” brick. I assume the idea is to “modernize” the appearance, but my expectation is that painted brick will look dated in 5-10 years. And once painted, there is no going back. But I have to admit many of these painted, rehabbed homes are drawing premium prices. I suspect they reflect whatever is currently being done on HGTV shows…
Of course, anyone should be free to do pretty much whatever they wish with their home.
The people that bought our last house painted the brick white. I think it looks terrible and find the idea questionable as they’ve taken a maintenance free surface and now it needs maintenance. But complicating matters, it looks like a very amateurish job.
I had reshaped and repaired the front doors and painted both with top grade door paint. Strong stuff that you should only use in a well ventilated space, like outdoors. It appear they slapped on some Home Depot special indoor/outdoor black paint. Blech!
But it is their house now and they can of course do what they want to it.
I’ve heard the same, but I would have to go digging for proof. I never looked into it as I think painting brick is a bad idea anyway.
What I do know, Brick is porous and that is part of what gives it, it’s longevity. Paint is not, so if you remove the porousness of brick you’re probably doing harm to the longevity of the brick.
I just did a small search, it really looks like painting brick is a very bad idea.
The purpose of paint is to cover or protect stuff that is ugly and must be covered or protected.
The purpose of brick is to look nice.
It does not need to be covered or protected.
And if you do paint it, it no longer looks nice-- It looks ridiculous.
Painted brick building just screams “institutional setting” to me.
My favorite brick buildings were made of mixed repurposed bricks (there’s an industry term for that, I bet @peedin ETA or @chela knows); some deep red, some terra cotta, some with random wear and discoloration from their prior lives.
It seems to be the trend around here too. They just painted the brick house a few doors down from me and I’ve seen a couple more around town.
That describes my thoughts exactly. It looks horrible and amateurish, and they’ve ruined one of the great selling points of brick (that it’s maintenance free). I know the idea is to “modernize” the look, but the end result doesn’t even look modernized to me. It just looks like crap.
I’ve seen several home renovation shows where it turns out nice, to be honest. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen it in person, done by a DIYer, which very well may look bad.
I have a brick facade on the lower front of my house, and it’s not beautiful. There’s no character. It’s dumb orange 60’s brick. The edges look dumb, not finished, just gooped on. It would probably look super cool if someone did maybe some kind of wash on it, made it look like “better” brick. As it stands now, I have no love for this particular brick.
I grew up in Maryland where brick was extensively used extensively for building because of the abundant red clay in the region. White painted bricks were quite common. I think it was often some kind of whitewash with a lot of lime or chalk content because it would come of on your fingers from touching it. Our elementary school was made of white painted brick like that. In the morning lined up waiting for the bell to ring and the doors to be opened we would imitate a ‘white thumb’ TV commercial about some brand of flour by rubbing a thumb against the wall outside.
On the street I lived on the houses alternated between natural and white painted bricks.
