Painting brick - The RIGHT way

This post is all about why you should stain brick instead of painting brick. Concrete stain or brick stain will outperform paint always. Not only is it better for the brick, it looks better and keeps the natural texture giving you the color with out the ugly painted over texture. Best of all NO PEELING!

When we purchased this home, the exterior bricks were a very ugly yellow color. I wanted to find a way to give them a refresh. This project turned out to be very easy and improved our curb appeal. We opted to stain the brick with brick/ concrete stain vs painting. Painted brick just looks cheap and wears off over time. I found the stain keeps the original brick texture and lets the brick breathe so it can last much longer.

The best part about Home Depot's Behr Concrete stain is that you can stain (paint) your brick any color. They will mix the color you want on site. I used the bright white base for my house.

Products used:

Behr Concrete stain: homedepot.sjv.io/n136qX

Roller used to apply paint: homedepot.sjv.io/GjBdaL

Graco Paint sprayer (handheld): homedepot.sjv.io/MXxdPo

Graco Paint sprayer x7:https://homedepot.sjv.io/7mr0EQ

Power washer: homedepot.sjv.io/VyeDnE

Process:

When I first started looking into staining the bricks, I could not find many information or products out there. I did find a powder stain that was extremely expensive and very sheer. Luckily, one day I was strolling through Hope Depot and found a product that would make this project much easier and way cheaper! BEHR creates special stain for masonry, concrete, and brick and offer it in a variety of colors.

I will be honest, I was very hesitant that this product would actually stick to the brick, and I was very doubtful of the coverage. I decided to buy a gallon and try it out as It was about a quarter of the price of the powder mixture I originally purchased.

I would recommend power washing your house before applying any paint. You want to try and remove as much dirt and debris before, so it does not get stuck in the paint after you start applying.

To my surprise, this product worked great! It has a built-in primer which saved us time and the coverage over the brick was very impressive. The powder stain I planned on using was very sheer and required up to four coats to cover whereas this product was opaque in two. Also, the texture is very similar to regular paint, so it was very easy to apply, and we had no issues with streaking.

I started off applying the stain with a roller, than a brush, and ended up using a paint sprayer. Being that this stain is water based, you can use it in your paint sprayer!

Before:

This was before.. YIKES. Sometimes I look back and I cannot believe what the house used to look like.

As you can see in the photo, our bricks were a pale-yellow color when we bought the house, and we chose to stain the bricks white. If your house has darker bricks, it may take more coats for the same coverage.

My favorite thing about this product is how easy it was to apply. There were no special instructions, and no need for a primer or special topcoat. It has been over two years now since we applied the paint, and the house still looks great, and we have had no issues with the stain chipping or peeling.

After: Bricks stained with Behr premium concrete stain

This paint also works great inside as well; we had the same brick on our fireplace, so we decided to apply it there as well. We originally planned on replacing all the brick, so we ended up save a lot of money by using this paint to refresh them instead.

Thanks for reading! <3

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