Painting Brick Fireplace – From White to Beautiful Brownstone
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
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.
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:
I painted all the mortar areas between the bricks with a 2″ paint brush.
As the mortar color dried, I mixed up a bucket of my base color for the bricks. Then poured it into a paint tray.
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).
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!
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).
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.
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.
Notice how the white specks showing through really make the bricks
look like they are re-claimed and rustic.
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!
Next up in the series: 5 Ways to Lighten up a Dark Room.Â
Followed by: Painting Decorative Graphics on Your Wall.
And I saved the best for last (coming soon): Installing Antique Reclaimed Heart Pine Flooring
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.
Reshma, it is called Wasabi Powder. Maybe by Behr?
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?
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.
Awesome!!! Definitely original!!! Tanks for the info!!! Let’s work!!! 🙂
Beautiful! It looks authentic!
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!
Done! The project came out really nice. See before and after photos here:
http://flic.kr/p/duQBjk
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????
Janet, can you email me a picture? I think I’d understand better if I saw it. PrettyHandyGirl(at)gmail.com
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!!
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.
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.
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.)
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!
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
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!
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.
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!