Color Selection

Brick Stain Colors: What's Possible

Color is mixed for your building rather than chosen from a product line, so the target can be a shade you have picked out, the weathered color of the wall next door, or a brick run that is no longer made. Darker, richer, greyer, warmer and lighter are all ordinary work. What decides the result is the brick itself, because stain is absorbed rather than laid on top, which is why the color is proved on your own wall before anything else is stained.

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The Range

What the range looks like on finished buildings.

There is no chart to point at, so here are nine finished walls. The label on each one is the change that was made to that particular building, not a color you can order by name.

A colonial house with soft grey brick, navy shutters and a white front door under a curved portico
Buff to soft grey A colonial taken from buff brick to a soft grey. The arches over the windows and the chimney were held slightly warmer than the walls.
The front of a two storey house, its pale grey brick running unbroken across the main gable and the garage wing under a dark roof
Off color pale grey evened The brick on this house went up with color problems and the plan on the table was to tear all of it off. It was stained instead, across most of the house, and photographed again eleven years later.
The rear elevation of a large house, the brick one even cream color across two storeys and the chimney
Blotched grey to even cream A wall that had come out patchy where the batches did not agree with each other, pulled to one even cream. The same house is on the site again at twenty five years old.
A two storey buff brick colonial with shuttered windows and a wing to the right, the brick one even color from wall to wall
Wall to wall mismatch blended The brick on this house went up in colors that did not match from one wall to the next. It was blended in 2000, and nineteen years later the people living there could not tell which brick had been stained.
A brick and glass office building under a clear sky, the 2002 addition and the 1950 block reading as one wall
New brick matched to old This office went up in 1950. When it expanded in 2002 the brick it was built from was no longer manufactured, so the new wing was stained one unit at a time until the two read as one wall.
A three storey red brick building with white windows, the banding courses reading the same red as the wall around them
White bands to red The white brick bands on this three storey building were changed to red. Nothing had failed and nothing was dirty, so the color was a decision rather than a repair. It was photographed again twenty four years later.
Close view of a white brick wall, the units an even white across pale mortar joints
Tan patches back to white A white wall where some units had lost their clay coating and were showing the tan body underneath. Only the off-color units were stained, whitened back into the range of the ones beside them.
Close view of school brick running a range of pink, buff and grey units across pale mortar joints
Flat runs back into a range The opposite job. Long stretches of this school had fired to the same color and read flat, so units were lightened and others darkened until the wall carried a range of pinks and buffs again.
Close view of a deep red brown brick wall, the units an even color across grey mortar joints
Wash blotches back into the wall Power washing had pulled the color out of this wall in pale patches. The pigment went into the damaged units only and stopped at the brick around them, holding one even deep red brown.

These are finished projects rather than a palette. There is no stock color to order and no minimum order to meet, because each formula is mixed for the masonry it is going onto. Every wall here comes out of the documented case record, and the first six are written up in full. More of them, with the dates and the years since, are in the project record.

What Stain Can Change

What kinds of changes can stain make?

  • Darker and richer

    The easiest change of all. Tired orange-red brick becomes deep charcoal, espresso, or a warm modern brown.

  • A different tone entirely

    Red toward gray, tan toward greige, pink toward earth. The undertones are custom mixed, not picked from a chart.

  • Even and uniform

    Blotchy walls, patchy repairs, and mismatched batches pulled to one consistent color.

  • Blended, not flat

    Because stain is translucent, we can keep the natural variation of a blend while shifting the overall color, so the wall still reads as real brick.

Stain adds pigment rather than removing it, so nothing here bleaches or strips the color already in the brick. Lightening is done instead by carrying lighter pigment over the units, usually across more than one pass, and it is routine work rather than a special case. What settles any of it is absorption, which is why the Brick Industry Association calls for a water test on the actual wall before staining, and why we do one before quoting.

Why There Is No Chart

The chart gets made on your building.

A stain is translucent and is absorbed into the masonry, so the color you end up with is your brick plus the pigment that goes over it. The specification puts a floor under that: the finished work must leave no visible gloss, sheen or film. It is also why a printed chip cannot tell you very much. The same recipe lands one way on a dense modern brick and another on a soft weathered one, and a screen adds a second layer of guesswork on top.

So the sample is built on the wall itself. A section is masked off, a recipe is mixed and brushed on, and it is adjusted coat by coat until it is right. The panel is refined rather than replaced; there is no version where we start again somewhere else on your building. On a match it goes exactly where the new masonry meets the old, because that join is the thing that has to disappear.

A brick test panel where individual bricks have each been stained a different shade, with small taped labels reading Pt, G, M and M plus under them
Twelve bricks in one test panel, each stained to a different recipe and labelled by hand. This is what a color chart looks like on this system: made on the job, out of the job's own brick.
On Site

Three sample panels, caught mid-job.

A rectangle masked off with tape on the red brick wall of a house, the wall around it blotched pale where it had been washed

Residence · Murrysville, PA · 2000

Step one on a house: a section masked off on the wall itself, before any pigment goes near it.
An applicator in a hard hat brushing stain onto single brick units on a freestanding mockup panel, blue tape marking every unit still to be darkened

Purcell Pavilion · University of Notre Dame · 2009

The same idea at university scale: a freestanding mockup panel, with blue tape marking every unit still to be darkened.
An applicator on a step stool brushing stain onto individual bricks in a basketweave panel, the finished pattern to his right and the pale untouched coursing to his left

Office building · Michigan · 2011

Pigment goes on one unit at a time. The finished pattern is on the right of the brush, the untouched coursing on the left.
How the Color Is Decided

Your color is mixed on your wall, not chosen from a chart.

Four steps between the first visit and a color you have already seen on your own building at full size.

  1. 01

    We read the brick

    Every wall has undertones and variation. We work from your brick, in daylight, on site.

  2. 02

    The formula is mixed on site

    Mineral oxide pigment, tuned by hand. There is no stock color to order and nothing to compromise on.

  3. 03

    It goes on your actual wall

    We tape off a section and stain it, then adjust: another coat here, more warmth there.

  4. 04

    You approve it at full size

    Nothing else is stained until you have seen the real color on your own building.

Before and After

The same wall, before and after.

Three jobs where the only thing that changed is the color of the masonry.

The same house after staining, every brick wall an even grey against the white siding and trim
The house before staining, the brick a buff yellow against the same white siding and trim
The same commercial wall after staining, the new brick now the same tan as the older brick beside it
A commercial building where a new run of pink-toned brick meets the tan brick of the older wall at a stone pier
The same wall after staining, its brick now carrying the same blended range of dark units as the taller building behind it
A low brick wall in one flat orange, beside a taller building whose brick runs a blended range of orange and dark units
Before After

A buff yellow brick house taken to grey. The siding, trim, gutters, roof and pergola are identical either side of the wipe, so the brick is the only thing that moved.

Drag to compare. Pick any job to see it.

CSI Section 04 25 10, Masonry Staining
Color Selection Mixed per project, tuned on the wall
Loose Units Up to five, color enhanced
Field Sample 10 sq. ft. on the actual building
Application Brush, by hand, unit by unit
Finish Translucent, no gloss, sheen or film
For Architects and Specifiers

Specifying a color that has no product number.

Colors are mixed for the project rather than selected from a fixed product line, so the target can be a manufacturer's current run, the weathered color of an existing wall, or a color that exists only in the design intent.

01

Matching masonry that already exists

Matching does not depend on locating the original brick, which on a building of any age is usually out of production. It depends on separating the two things a stain can and cannot change.

  1. Look for the original unit first

    If the brick is still in production, staining may not be the right answer at all, and we will say so.

  2. Select a donor brick for size and texture, not color

    Stain changes color. It cannot change a unit's dimensions or its surface character, so those are chosen at the source and color is left until last.

  3. Calculate the blend

    The shades present in the existing wall are identified and their percentages counted, then the stain schedule is set to reproduce that ratio rather than an average of it.

  4. Prove the pattern on a panel, then stain

    The blend is verified on a sample panel at the join before any of the elevation is committed.

Mortar joints can be stained on their own, or with the brick, when the joint color is what is holding an elevation apart. This is the same work in both directions: new masonry can be brought to old, and old masonry can be brought to new.

02

Mockups, submittals and approval

The specification asks for two sample objects, and both are physical: up to five color enhanced loose units for color matching, and a field sample created on a 10 sq. ft. area of the actual surface of the building to be stained.

Color is approved on the substrate, never from a chart. A sample area is masked off on the actual wall, the target color is built coat by coat, and it is adjusted until it is signed off. Nothing else on the building is stained until that has happened.

Mockups

On institutional projects the approved mockup becomes the reference standard the full application is signed off against. If a mockup color is rejected it is adjusted and re-approved; it is not overruled.

Two qualification submittals sit alongside the samples. The applicator submits ten jobs completed over fifteen years, each with its completion date, precise location, product used and before and after photographs; and the specification sets a floor of twenty years of successful in-service performance for both the applicator and the manufacturer.

Architectural specification, Section 04 25 10, full section text (opens in a new tab) PDF, 3 pages, 0.2 MB
03

What the color is, and what decides whether it takes

The pigment is an 80 to 100 mesh mineral oxide, identical to the natural pigments used in brick manufacturing, carried in water with a proprietary bonding chemical that changes from liquid to solid as the work dries.

It is not film forming, and there is no acrylic or latex in it. The pigment is absorbed and bonds with the clay substrate rather than bridging across it, which is what keeps the texture and the tonal variation of the existing masonry readable after the color has moved.

On vapor permeability the Brick Industry Association is class level rather than brand level: mineral based stains, the class this system belongs to, are preferred due to their high water vapor permeability.

Two limits are worth putting in front of a specifier early. Glazed brick cannot be stained, because the exposed surface is impermeable, and some unglazed brick with dense surfaces will not successfully receive a masonry stain either. Any coating, sealer, oil, wax or curing compound has to come off first, since anything that stops pigment reaching the pore structure stops the system working. This is why the water test is not a formality.

There is no ASTM standard to cite here, and that absence is itself the citable fact: historically there have been no formal technical resources or ASTM standards related to stain materials or their application, because formulation and application are proprietary and differ between practitioners.

What the BIA recommends in place of a standard is documented history: use contractors and products with demonstrated performance on similar assemblies in similar climates, and validate that with references carrying photographs and addresses. That is the whole reason this site publishes its project record with dates and years elapsed instead of a specification sheet full of numbers nobody measured.

Brick Industry Association, Brick Brief on staining brickwork (opens in a new tab) PDF, 4 pages, 7.7 MB
Architects and engineers Specifications and documents Warranty terms
Color Questions

Colors, Asked and Answered

Almost. Darker, richer, warmer, cooler, greyer and completely different tones are all ordinary work, and the color is mixed for your brick rather than picked from a range. What decides the result is the masonry itself, because stain has to be absorbed to work. A water test on your own wall settles that before anything is quoted.
Yes. Stain adds pigment and cannot bleach out the color that is already there, so lightening is done by carrying lighter pigment over the units, usually across more than one pass. It is routine rather than exceptional: the case files include walls where dark brick was stained twice to bring it up into the range of the brick around it, and others where a percentage of the units was lightened to move a whole blend.
On your own wall. We stain a sample area, adjust it coat by coat until it is exactly right, and you approve the real thing before the job starts. The sample cost is credited toward your project.
Yes. The stain is translucent and is absorbed into the masonry rather than sitting on the face of it, so the texture and the natural variation stay visible. The specification requires that the finished work leave no visible gloss, sheen or film. It reads as brick that came that color, because the pigment is in the brick.
Usually, and it is a large part of what we do. Matching does not depend on finding the original brick. A donor unit is chosen for size and texture, since stain changes color but cannot change a unit's dimensions or surface, and the color is then mixed to the wall it has to join. Where the existing masonry runs several shades, the percentages are counted and reproduced rather than averaged.
The Brick Industry Association describes mineral stains as giving a colorfast, durable finish across North American climates, and notes projects where the stain has lasted twenty years or more. The Masonry Cosmetics lifetime warranty covers the color correction system against peeling, cracking, blistering and flaking, and it carries through to work applied by a certified contractor.
Yes. Stained brick can be stained again, usually darker or richer, without hurting the brick.

See the color on your own wall

The sample panel is built on your building, adjusted until it is right, and credited toward the job. Nothing else is stained until you have approved it.

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