DIY Brick Wall

When we built our home I hadn't decided what color scheme/theme I wanted to do in our master bedroom so I had the entire room painted white as a blank slate. We've slowing been furnishing all the rooms in our house and our bedroom got pushed to the back.

Initially I thought I wanted to do a wallpaper feature wall behind our bed but I wanted something white because I ended up loving the soft white theme in here, it is very clean and bright feeling. I found this amazing wallpaper at Jones Paint & Glass and priced it out at about $140 to finish the wall (not including install). My husband did not want to do wallpaper. He did not want to install it or take it down so I had to find another alternative.

The next choice was real brick but at about $12/sqft installed this would have cost $1400.00. Although we had done real brick as our laundry backsplash and plan on doing a real brick wall in our media room, only the two of us would be seeing this wall so we decided not to invest in real brick in this particular room. 

These faux brick panels are at lowes/brick panels and are $25 for a 4X8 sheet. We had them cut them at Lowe's however we did need to adjust some of the cuts at home as well and it was really tough to get a straight line because the panels are so large and heavy. With paint the total cost of the wall was 130.00.

After installing the wall I used a scrap piece to test white washing methods. I searched white washing on Pinterest to find out the easiest way to do it but basically it was just figuring out how much water to add to the paint. I would always suggest testing it because different products and materials soak up paint differently. On the left is 1/3rd paint and 2/3 water, middle is 1/3rd water and 2/3rds paint, and on the right we added some grey paint as a test.

 

We chose to do 2/3rds paint so we didn't get as many water marks/bubbles, also instead of adding grey paint we simply took a cloth and rubbed some of the paint off select bricks before it dried. The wetter it is when you do this the more paint will rub off. I tried to rub off the paint more on some bricks than others to get a more natural look. I also did a random pattern.

 

 

In the end I think we got a pretty natural look and for the cost it was a home run. The install was about 2 hours and only 1 hour for painting. I would never suggest faux brick panels in a clients home, especially if they are building, the cost of real brick is small in comparison to the home. However, if you are remodeling or simply designing one room, there is nothing wrong with faux brick if real brick isn't in the budget.