We are big fans of painting brick. However, natural brick also looks stunning with the right paint choices on trim, siding, and soffits. Here we’re sharing inspiring home exterior brick and paint color combos with both painted and unpainted brick. These exterior home designs have won the hearts of our designers and clients alike.
Painting brick can feel intimidating. Envisioning the new color on your home before committing can help. Our virtual exterior designers will create a custom exterior design for your home and mock it up, allowing you to compare the before & after images and proceed on your update with confidence. Get started now!
These Benjamin Moore classics are two of our favorite white paints. In fact, we named Benjamin Moore’s Seapearl our exterior paint color of the year. With an LRV of 77.95, Seapearl is an off-white. Simply White‘s LRV is 91.7, so it is much brighter. (Learn what LRV is and why it matters, especially with white paint.) While these similar colors create a monochromatic color scheme, their different undertones provide a subtle contrast. Simply White (painted on the trim here) gives off a warm glow, which both pulls out and contrasts with the gray undertones of Seapearl (painted on the brick).
Alabaster by Sherwin Williams is such a good option for brick. This paint color reads differently across textures, so it’s a great choice for use on a variety of home exterior materials. Our designers used Alabaster on the brick, trim, and siding pictured on home above. When going this route, we suggest adding some dimension and depth with accents in a darker paint, such as Tricorn Black by Sherwin Williams. Tricorn Black was used on the garage doors and front door above. Alabaster isn’t a stark white, nor is Tricorn Black a stark black, so this isn’t a harsh black-and-white checkerboard-style combo. This brick and paint color combo is modern and offers understated drama.
This warm, earthy brick and paint color combination brings a sense of harmony to the home’s facade. Rather than serving as a point of contrast, these paint colors complement one another. Olympic Mountains takes center stage on the brick, Jockey Hollow Gray adorns the soffits and fascia, and Simply White completes the look by highlighting the trim.
Brick homes with orange clay tile roofs look so fresh and modern when the brick is painted beige or off-white. Such a unique roof should be the focal point of an exterior design, and red brick can compete with it. One of our designers’ go-to beige choices is Grant Beige by Benjamin Moore. In this example, accents in Urbane Bronze by Sherwin Williams provide depth and bridge the gap between the lighter beige and the saturated roof tile color. (Urbane Bronze is one of our top Sherwin Williams exterior paint colors for 2021, in large part due to its versatility.) Pro tip:
If you’re dealing with brick that’s never been painted, you have the opportunity to try a limewash. This lovely effect gives an aged, historic feel to a home, with hints of brick still showing through. On the house above, our designer suggested the Classico limewash by ROMABIO. Paints with warm undertones complement the warm brick showing through. And this home has so many beautiful architectural elements to accentuate with paint. Here, the designer recommended accents painted in Iron Mountain by Benjamin Moore and Natural Choice and Porpoise, both by Sherwin Williams.
It’s not like you need our permission, but as you can tell from our recommendations thus far, we often recommend using both Sherwin Williams and Benjamin Moore paints together in one design! When painted on properly prepped brick, both brands perform beautifully. Seapearl looks especially lovely on brick because the front-facing bricks appear off-white, and the crevices between the brick look gray, providing built-in dimension. On this home, painting all of the non-brick siding in Iron Ore by Sherwin Williams and the trim and accents in Onyx by Benjamin Moore provides a rich, deep contrast and pulls out Seapearl’s gray undertones.
If you’re keeping your red brick au natural, greige trim can give it a polished look. It’s one of the best brick and paint color combos in our book. In fact, many bricks naturally have specks of gray and beige stone in them, and mortar often appears greige from a distance. Painting your trim in Jockey Hollow Gray by Benjamin Moore will pull out these tones.
With a little paint, mixed materials act as collaborators rather than competitors. This home has a brick addition, shaker siding, and natural stone—all beautiful materials on their own, but the color palette made it feel a bit overwhelming to the eye. In this situation, the right brick and paint color combos can make all the difference. By painting the brick in Benjamin Moore’s Revere Pewter, a neutral, our designers allowed the natural detail of the stone to come to the forefront. Iron Mountain on the shaker siding provides gives the house more dimension—notice how flat the façade in the before photo feels when compared to the after?—and pulls out the grays and blues in the stone. Onyx paint on the shutter gives a pop of contrast.
Does this paint combination sound familiar? It’s the same trio as number 8 above, but it obviously looks way different when combined with bare brick. Revere Pewter, Iron Mountain, and Onyx are three neutrals that work well together. These paint colors help define a home’s architectural features without feeling too busy, even with a high-contrast red brick and light mortar base.
Pale brick or limewash isn’t for everyone. If you’re looking to update your brick with a fresh white, Alabaster is a great option. Its warm beige undertones help it play well with natural wood. This combination, along with the black-trim Marvin windows, completely modernize this home’s look.
Here are a few main takeaways regarding brick and paint color combos that apply no matter what your home looks like today: Brick often looks great painted off-white, beige, or greige. Natural brick works well with warm neutrals. Lighter tones show off brick’s texture, and adding dark gray paint on shutters and trim creates contrast.
Not to scare you, but once you add paint to brick, it’s nearly impossible to remove it. The professionals at brick&batten will help you make paint and design choices you won’t regret. Get us some photos of your home, tell us what you’re looking for in a quick survey, and you’ll receive a custom exterior makeover plan, including before & after mockups like those featured in this article. Plus, you get a clickable resource list with paint color recommendations, suggested light fixtures to use, links to outdoor furniture that we love for your space, and more. Our deliverables give you the direction you need to tackle your home exterior update in whatever way you’d prefer. Get started today.
Bonus tip for reading to the end: The brick and paint color combination used in the home design at the very beginning of this post is natural brick with siding in Graphite by Benjamin Moore and eaves, soffit, and trim painted in Black by Benjamin Moore.
