Painting Brick and Partial Brick Homes

If you own a brick house you might think “Well I never have to worry about painting it” and that’s true but only for the brick portion of your house. Unless your brick house has no trim, shutters, front door, or garage doors, there are some places that are going to need paint and also some places you may well want to paint to make your home suit your own taste.

In Michigan, there are a surprising number of homes that are either mostly brick or half brick (or even half stone) and they span a good century of construction. Many developments feature homes that are brand new and a mix of brick with some other siding material.

Brick houses tend to cost a bit more initially because brick can be an expensive building material, but one of the selling points of it is that it doesn’t require maintenance. Today’s brick houses tend to be a bit more dressed up than in the past. It’s not uncommon to see brick mixed with some stonework or a small amount of stucco or siding material added. They also tend to feature wood trim around the eaves, windows, garage doors, and entranceways.

The brick homes you find around Ann Arbor run the gamut in terms of the amount of brick employed but none of them are truly homes that will never see a paintbrush.

So how do you approach painting a brick house? You already know the primary color of the house, it’s the one color on the house that doesn’t need painting, it’s the color of your brickwork. Generally speaking, you are talking about rich earth tones from dark red to tan to brown. Assuming you don’t intend to paint over the brick (which you certainly can do!) let’s just focus on what’s left and how to pair color choices with brick colors.

The general trend is to paint the trim along the roofline the same as the trim around the windows and doors and that’s true of almost any house. That same color is often used to paint trim around the garage doors as well as the garage doors themselves. The shutters tend to be where an accent color is employed if your house has them. You could stick to just one color but it offers less visual interest. Darker colors are usually found on shutters, from black to maroon to dark green, etc.

The shutter color can also be repeated on the garage doors if you really want to emphasize your accent color. The impact of doing this is lessened if the garage doors aren’t visible from the street. From a strict curb appeal standpoint that actually matters.

Lastly, you come to the front door. The front door offers all kinds of color flexibility, it’s not uncommon to have a front door with a bit of personality. The entryway is that last up-close glimpse of the exterior before anyone enters and it can be a glimpse of your interior color scheme as opposed to strictly representing the exterior.

Most people tend to play it safe with trim color, going with a shade of white or something warmer like tan and then moving into lighter complementary earth tones that work well with the brick. The trim color takes on a bigger role if your house has a front porch or columns. Here lighter colors make those features stand out in front of the brick and it’s better to go lighter given the amount of color they show.

For houses that are only partially brick, let’s say the bottom half of a ranch-style house, you can almost treat the color choices as if they were two houses. You choose siding colors that work well with your trim colors but also have to “play nicely” with the brick (again unless you choose to paint that as well). The less brick there is the less it can influence your choices.

Safe plays here include going with black and white regardless of the brick color, going with nature-inspired colors like leaf greens, tans, etc., and avoiding anything like light blue or yellow.

If the addition of brick to the color mix is causing any confusion you can always have a color consultant help out. At CertaPro of Ann Arbor, we provide a free color consultation, and it’s easier than lugging a brick around with you to a paint store if you’re thinking of taking the DIY approach! In addition, we are happy to meet with you and provide a free estimate for your house painting needs with or without including painting the brick itself.