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Home » Before and After » Painting Brick Fireplace – From White to Beautiful Brownstone

Painting Brick Fireplace – From White to Beautiful Brownstone

August 16, 2010 Brittany Bailey 137 Comments

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Painting Brick Fireplace

This is the first in a five part series on renovating our living room:

1. Faux painting brick over a previously painted white brick fireplace (this post)
2. Lightening up a room in 5 steps
3. Painting decorative graphics on a wall
4. Preparing to Install Antique Heart Pine Floors (and living to tell about it!)
5. Installing Heart Pine Floors and the Final Reveal

I know the trend lately is to paint fireplace brick white. Especially if the brick is an ugly bright red or some other ugly color. I’m pretty sure that is why our fireplace was painted in the first place.

Painting Brick Fireplace
Before Shot

Painting Brick Fireplace

But, the fact that our fireplace, mantle and the built-in bookshelves on both sides of our fireplace are white, made for an overwhelming amount of white on that one wall. I thought about painting the mantle, but only briefly. I really wanted the warmth and contrast of bricks to set off all the white in our living room.

I stumbled across a few websites showing painted brick here and here. Then I thought, “If someone can do it, then there is a 95% chance that I can do it too!”

I wasn’t sure how it would turn out, but in the end I am amazed by how real it looks. And, how easy it was to do! The true test came when I fooled the builder of our house (he has lived on our street for over 30 years) into thinking I had stripped the paint off the bricks! Sweet success.

This is a relatively easy project. It took several hours, but can be done in sections.

Painting Brick Fireplace Materials Needed:

TSP cleaner
Scrub brush for use with TSP cleaner
Drop cloth
Newspapers
Painters Tape
Paint Roller and Tray
Stiff 2″ paint brush
Car wash sponge or large 6″ x 3″ sized sponge
Spray bottle with water
7 paper plates
Rags for clean Up
Acrylic Paint (see below for colors)

Before you do anything, buy some TSP (tri-sodium phosphate) cleaner at the hardware store and follow the directions to clean your brick. Be forewarned that you may actually like the color of your bricks once they are clean and dry! If you still hate the color, proceed…

After working up a test board by playing with several color combinations, I chose a warm brown brick color. I also tweaked my mortar color before painting it on my fireplace.

Painting Brick Fireplace

I covered the mantle and bookcases by taping newspapers to them. Then, covered the floor with a drop cloth.

I mixed up a small container of my mortar color. I used some leftover latex satin taupe paint from our other house and added some black and a little dark brown to achieve the perfect mortar color.

My color looks like this warm gray cement color:

Painting Brick Fireplace

I painted all the mortar areas between the bricks with a 2″ paint brush.

Painting Brick Fireplace

As the mortar color dried, I mixed up a bucket of my base color for the bricks. Then poured it into a paint tray.

Painting Brick Fireplace

Then, I laid out my seven paper plates and filled the first one with a deep chocolate oops paint (Valspar Latex Eggshell Chestnut).

And poured a half dollar size of the following colors onto the other plates (one color per plate).

Painting Brick Fireplace

I used a paint roller to roll the base color onto small 3′ x 3′ sections of my fireplace. (Don’t worry if the paint doesn’t soak into all the grooves. Some of the white showing through made my bricks look old and rustic.)

While the base color was still wet, I covered my sponge with the Chestnut color. Then dipped the sponge into one or two of the brick tint colors. I sponged one brick at a time using the same color tints sporadically around the wall. Keeping the brick colors varied and random make them look real!

Painting Brick Fireplace

When the sponge needed to be reloaded with paint, I began with the chestnut color first, then added one or two new color tints to the sponge. You will have to refill the paper plates as you use up the paint.

I kept working in small sections, to be able to work while the base color was still wet (use the spray bottle of water to lightly wet the bricks if it dries too quick).

Painting Brick Fireplace

The best part was that if I didn’t like a color, I could go back over it and try a different tint. Notice how I randomly dispersed the darker brown bricks. This is key to having a realistic look.

Painting Brick Fireplace

On the hearth I had to press more gently with the sponge since the mortar lines on our hearth were almost level with the bricks. I kept a wet rag near by to wipe up any wandering brick paint.

Painting Brick Fireplace
Close up picture of the bricks.
Notice how the white specks showing through really make the bricks
look like they are re-claimed and rustic.
Painting Brick Fireplace
After Picture
Painting Brick Fireplace
Daylight picture after decorated for the holidays.
I can’t believe what a huge difference painting the bricks made in our living room. It warmed up the space and actually made our fireplace recede into the room. Let’s take one more look at the before and after:
Painting Brick Fireplace
Side note: The latex and acrylic paint has held up great (even after several fires using our gas logs.)  If you need to paint the bricks inside the firebox, you will need to use paint that is heat tolerant.

And for those wondering how long this took. Including the prep work (cleaning, taping, mixing colors) it took about 5 hours total. Not too bad since I’m a night owl and could watch DIY network while painting!

Be careful not to put anything heavy on the hearth for a few weeks while the paint hardens.

Next up in the series: 5 Ways to Lighten up a Dark Room. 
Followed by: Painting Decorative Graphics on Your Wall.
And I saved the best for last (coming soon): Installing Antique Reclaimed Heart Pine Flooring

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Before and After, Do It Yourself, Home Tour, painting, Painting & Antiquing Techniques, ReNew

Comments

  1. Reshma says

    August 1, 2013 at 1:02 pm

    The fire place looks beautiful. I have a similar looking fireplace and want to paint he surrounding walls. May be green tone or some other color. What is the green color on your wall? Do you recommend any other color?
    Regards,
    Reshma.

    Reply
    • Brittany Bailey says

      August 1, 2013 at 2:40 pm

      Reshma, it is called Wasabi Powder. Maybe by Behr?

      Reply
  2. Janet says

    January 31, 2013 at 5:18 pm

    Sorry if you covered this question, but I was wondering why you didn’t remove the white paint? Could you tell what color the origional brick was? It looks like a lot of work to get back to what may be underneath the white paint?

    Reply
  3. Mary Lou Auckland says

    November 21, 2012 at 11:04 am

    Thanks for a great project. I just completed the fireplace makeover and it looks wonderful! It took me a little longer than you said but it was well worth it. It truly does look like real brick and made my fireplace less of a sore thumb. I purchased two containers of each of the colors and really didn’t need that much material. Thanks for great instructions.

    Reply
  4. Dinorah says

    November 16, 2012 at 8:37 pm

    Awesome!!! Definitely original!!! Tanks for the info!!! Let’s work!!! 🙂

    Reply
  5. Peggy says

    October 31, 2012 at 9:02 pm

    Beautiful! It looks authentic!

    Reply
  6. Shelly says

    October 12, 2012 at 11:25 pm

    Yes! This is exactly what I was looking for! And I love the fact that I can pick whatever color brick I want—definitely going to try this soon. Thanks for posting!

    Reply
    • Shelly says

      November 20, 2012 at 12:12 pm

      Done! The project came out really nice. See before and after photos here:

      http://flic.kr/p/duQBjk

      Reply
  7. Janet says

    September 22, 2012 at 10:26 pm

    I recently decided to paint NOT my bricks they are beautiful, but I have four white like stone to hold pics on the fire place. I didn’t like the white at all….so my husband and I decided to go black, I like it, but the floor where the old fashion stoves sits was an awful peach colour and in ruff shape. I decided to go a dark grey……..the stove it’s self is black and of course the pipes leading out. I am unsure weather I should just paint the floor black too, before sitting the stove on it…..or stenciling some nice old fashion black design on and leave the grey! It might just be that I’m not use of it just yet, not sure if the different colours will just simply not look right! UGH…….any suggestions anyone????

    Reply
    • Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl) says

      September 22, 2012 at 10:38 pm

      Janet, can you email me a picture? I think I’d understand better if I saw it. PrettyHandyGirl(at)gmail.com

      Reply
  8. Abby says

    September 18, 2012 at 8:11 am

    Hi Brittany – this is fantastic and just what I was looking for!! I’m looking to do more red and blues in my brick coloring… do you have any recommendations for paint colors in that family? I see on your sample board you had a blue section… do you remember that color? Thanks so much for your help and for your blog!!

    Reply
    • Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl) says

      September 22, 2012 at 10:39 pm

      Abby, that purplish brick was just a mixture of other paints. If you like a bluer tone, buy brick red colors and maybe a violet? Steer away from the burnt colors. I think you’ll just have to experiment to get the colors you like.

      Reply
  9. Lauren says

    July 5, 2012 at 1:39 pm

    I’d like to paint my brick fireplace, but have no idea where to begin. The brick is this funny, pale pink color. Could I use these colors to make it similar to the color you created with yours? Would I have to paint it white first? The pink bricks don’t go at all with the paint colors of the room, and it’s the elephant in the room.

    Reply
    • Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl) says

      July 5, 2012 at 10:08 pm

      Lauren, if your’s isn’t painted yet, I’d paint primer on the bricks and then follow my tutorial. It would be great if you can get the paint store to tint your primer to be the same color as the grout (to save you that step.)

      Reply
  10. Tonya says

    April 30, 2012 at 2:38 pm

    So….. here we go! I just scrubbed my fireplace. Mine is not typical…… has some bigger sized stone, but in the shape of regular brick… only bigger. Waiting for it to dry so I can put on my first coat. Tried to match the colors listed here, but no luck. So I made up my own color scheme. Wish me luck!

    Reply
    • Brittany (aka Pretty Handy Girl) says

      April 30, 2012 at 2:58 pm

      Tonya, you’ll do fine! Just remember it is paint, you can always paint over it and tweak bricks you don’t like. Enjoy and be sure to send me a picture!!! ;-D

      Reply
  11. Laurie says

    April 6, 2012 at 11:29 pm

    Thank you so much for posting this. I’ve been looking for inspiration for three years and now finally had the ways and means to paint over my stark white hearth. It came out fantastic and looks just like brick again!

    Reply
  12. Jacqueline says

    March 27, 2012 at 10:46 am

    wow i really love how that turned out! love the before and after comparison. it’s funny, i normally would thinking changing to a lighter brick fireplace would look better, but actually – it looks better as the brownstone. 😀 great job! would it be ok to link to your post from my site? i love to share what awesome work diy folks have done.

    Reply
  13. Lori says

    February 19, 2012 at 2:23 pm

    I found your page yesterday and today my white painted brick fireplace is back to brick. Thanks for posting this info, I was only thinking of the work it would be to strip it…A day later it’s back to brick and no stripper!

    Reply

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Hi, I'm Brittany aka Pretty Handy Girl. I like the smell of coffee and sawdust in the morning. I live to break stereotypes and empower you to take on your own DIY project.

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