How To Decorate Your Home With A Painted Faux-Brick Wall

When you paint your home's interior, there are many ways you can add your own personality and style to a room. Painting a faux-finish onto your home's walls is a popular way to add variety to your home's interior. Here are some instructions to help you paint your own faux brick wall in your home.

Select the Paint

To create a faux brick surface on a wall in your home, first, you will need to paint the wall a neutral color. This neutral color will appear as the mortar on the wall as it peeks between your painted bricks. Choose a flat acrylic wall paint in an off-white or light taupe color, which is a common color of brick mortar. 

Next, you will need to choose three paint colors for the bricks, which you will combine together as you paint the realistic-looking brick pattern. For the main red paint color, choose a medium-red colored paint. Then, select two other colors for the brick's accent colors. To give your wall a traditional red brick look, you can choose colors, such as dark red, maroon, rust, or terra cotta. Make sure you select a flat wall acrylic paint for the three brick colors.

Prepare the Brick Stamp

Make a brick-patterned wall stamp from brick-shaped sponges and a section of plywood cut to 10 by 20 inches. Most hardware stores will cut your plywood on site for you when you buy it. 

Next, buy several large-sized cellulose sponges that you can cut down to the shape of your bricks. You will need to cut out eight bricks that are each eight inches long and three and five-eighths inches high for a standard-sized brick. Then, you will also need one half-sized sponge brick to fill in the edges of your stamped wall. This half-sized brick needs to be cut four inches long and three and five-eighths inches high. Use a serrated kitchen knife to cut the edges of each sponge. Use the serrated knife to slice and cut small pieces from the corners and edges of each sponge brick to make each one look a little different. 

Position your large-sized sponge bricks onto the piece of plywood, making four rows containing two bricks each. Place the bricks in a traditional brick pattern so each brick sits above the mortar space of the two adjacent bricks below it. Also, make sure the bricks are all spaced three-eighths of an inch apart, which is a common width for a mortar joint. 

Using craft glue, glue each sponge brick into place on the plywood. Leave the half-sized brick free. You will use it at the end of this project to stamp and fill in any spaces your brick stamp won't reach.

Paint the Wall

Before you stamp the first line of bricks, it is important to mark the wall with a level line to use as a guide. Use a level to mark the top of your wall with a line of masking tape or chalk line to mark your guide. It is not always best to follow your ceiling or floor line as these can be unlevel in some older homes. 

Using a paint brush, apply your main brick color of paint onto the tops of your sponge stamp, fully coating them in paint. Then, apply the two accent paint colors onto the tops of your paint-covered sponges in a random pattern. 

Line up the sponge stamp on the top left side of your wall, using your tape or chalk line as a guide. Press the sponge stamp onto the wall for several seconds, then remove the stamp. Reapply the paint to the sponge stamp using the same process with all three colors. Line up the sponge stamp on the wall with the previously stamped bricks and press the stamp onto the wall. 

When you stamp your first full row of bricks on the wall, begin again on the left-hand side of the wall immediately below the first stamped row of bricks. Continue this process to finish the entire wall. Use the half-sized sponge stamp to fill in any unstamped areas. 

Now you have a beautiful painted faux brick wall in your home. For more information about painting the inside of your house, contact a company like Eco Paint, Inc.