Tips For Painting Your Exterior Brick

I’m so excited to share our exterior before and after with you today! This post is sponsored by The Home Depot. They carry everything you need to take on a major DIY like this one, and so many others! I was so excited to celebrate the change of seasons with this big change to our home. Right now, The Home Depot is offering a Red, White, and Blue savings event across the whole store that can help me get everything I need to make my indoor and outdoor summer project dreams a reality (like appliances, tools, patio, storage, and of course paint sprayers!) both in-store and directly to my door. So convenient!

A few weeks ago, we had our home painted by Davis Custom Finishes. Asa Davis (our friend and favorite local Nashville painter) is back today to share a few tips for DIY painting your exterior brick. We used the same paint for both our brick and trim details, which saved a LOT of time.

Here is the before and after comparison for our home. Paint makes a HUGE difference. The only change here besides the paint was swapping out the door for a more era-appropriate, mid-century-inspired door.

Depending on the size of your home, it is totally possible to paint your home yourself. For our size of home, we ended up spending about $1,000 on paint and about $7,500 on labor. So you can see here, the labor is the main part of the expense and if you take the time to do the painting yourself, you can save a significant amount of money.

One thing I would note about the size of our home is that it’s a little deceptive in photos because it’s built on a hill. So from the front it is one story, but from the back it is almost a full three stories tall (there is a storage basement UNDER our walk-out basement), so there was more brick to paint than it looks like from the front elevation. If you have a true one-story house, this project might actually turn to be something you could achieve with one or two people in a weekend!

We chose Behr Masonry, Stucco and Brick Paint, which is available online, pre-tinted, and ready to go. This can be used on the interior or exterior (I’ll show you how we used it on the interior at the end of this post). This product is very affordable and comes with a 20-year customer satisfaction guarantee (!!!!!!). I chose the color Swiss Coffee by Behr—it’s a creamy white.

During our quarantine, one of our main “hobbies” has been to drive around the neighborhoods and look at different houses paint jobs. I realized that a lot of houses seem a bit blinding when they are painted with (I can only assume) untinted white. But there is also a point where the cream colors become TOO beige and look dingy. I wanted something that read as “true white” when you drive by, but that was actually a bit toned down. Swiss Coffee is the perfect color for this. I am SO happy with it. We decided to do all the trim and details white instead of doing contrast trim. I am really pleased with this choice and feel it helped to modernize our 1965 home without making it “too 2020.”

For our front door, we chose this door and painted it in Green Balsam by Behr. I painted the door myself and it only took about three hours, split into two days. For a full hard-dry paint tutorial, follow this.

Now, back to the exterior paint …

Here are a few tips if you’re looking to paint your own exterior:

-Pressure wash the brick, preferably using bleach or some similar chemical to kill any mildew that may be growing on the brick. Rinse thoroughly using the pressure washer.

-Let the brick dry out. Dry times can vary depending on temperature and humidity.

-Mask off the windows with plastic or paper and painter’s tape.

-Mask off any other trim you don’t want painted. For our home, we painted all the trim and brick the same color with the same paint, saving a significant amount of time. Consider this when choosing between contrast trim and matching trim.

-You don’t have to spray, but it is certainly the easiest way to paint the exterior of the house. Using a large sprayer with a 517 tip and pressure turned up to high is ideal as masonry paint is generally pretty thick.

-Depending on how porous the brick is, you may want to use a roller to work the paint into the mortar joints while the paint is still wet. If you don’t have a sprayer and don’t want to buy or rent one, you can cut in the edges of the walls with a brush and roll the paint onto the walls just like you would the interior of a room. This can be quite time consuming as you will need to work the paint into each mortar joint.

-A very thick roller nap such as a 1.25″ is preferred.

-Two coats is definitely a must.

I used the Graco Pro Paint sprayer, but The Home Depot has a variety of other options on sale now during the Red, White and Blue Event! You can check out all the paint sprayer savings here. If you don’t want to buy, The Home Depot also has a convenient Tool Rental program where you can rent the exact sprayer I used.

And here are a few more completed photos of our home from every angle.

One of my favorite features of the home is this brick panel in the front. I always loved these bricks that jut out and I couldn’t wait to paint them white because I knew they would stand out way more. The same thing happened with our former home when we painted it. If you have any cool brick details, they will really show up more when painted a solid color. Our older garage doors look brand new with just a few coats of paint!! The whole house feels SO FRESH. Even the back porch. It feels so cohesive now. Every time we pull up to the house I am shocked by how much better it looks. Painting it added so much curb appeal!