Adding Color to Brick Houses in Bridgemill and Beyond

When you think of a brick house you tend to think “Well I never have to worry about painting it” and that’s true but only to a point. Unless your brick house has no trim, no shutters, and no front door there are some places that are going to need paint and also some places you may well want to paint to personalize your home.

Brick houses tend to cost a bit more because brick can be an expensive siding material, but one of the selling points of it is that it doesn’t require maintenance. That “doesn’t require maintenance” covers a lot like worrying about rotting wood, wind damage, chipping paint, leaks, and insect damage as well as painting. 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 entryways.

The brick homes you find in developments like Fort Mill’s Bridgemill are these types of brick homes. It’s not just in Bridgemill, these can be found throughout the south both because of their ease of maintenance as well as their insulating ability. In mild climates brick is as good in keeping out the heat as keeping it in as temperatures fluctuate seasonally.

So how do you approach painting a brick house? You already know the primary color of the house, it’s the average of all the different shades of brick used to build it. Generally speaking, you are talking about rich earth tones running from tan to brown to a deep red. 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. 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. 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 be re-used on garage doors if you really want to go heavy on the 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 door can be nearly any color you want. It’s common 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. If the door has a natural wood finish you might want to match it to the same shade as the hardwood floors in your foyer so that when the door is open it doesn’t look like a mismatch when you’re inside.

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 relate to the brick. Alternately you can go with a lighter version of the color of your roofing material, this can act as a transition from your roof color to the brick. The shutters can be a color choice independent of the brick and can be repeated on the garage doors. Since the shutter and trim colors are already next to each other around the windows, if it works there it should work as trim around the garage doors and the doors themselves.

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. When you’re ready to have your brick house painted, whether it’s in Bridgemill, or in the surrounding area, give us a call at CertaPro‌ ‌Painters^®‌ ‌of‌ ‌Rock‌ ‌Hill‌ and we will be happy to provide you with advice and a free estimate.