Brick painting in Cambridge, starting with the right question
We take on brick painting across Cambridge in two forms. The first, and most common, is painting brickwork that has been painted before and is now peeling, stained or simply the wrong colour. The second is painting bare brick that has never had a coat, which deserves more thought before anyone opens a tin.
Graham visits, looks at the brick, the mortar and the age of the house, and talks it through with you. Sometimes that conversation ends with a quotation. Sometimes it ends with advice to clean or repoint the brick instead. Rendered and pebbledashed walls have their own page on render and masonry painting, and the rest of the outside of the house is covered by our house painting service.
Should brick be painted at all?
Brick and the mortar between it take in rainwater and let it dry out again. Older houses, especially those built with soft bricks and lime mortar, rely on that drying. A coating that seals the face can hold moisture in the wall. In winter, trapped water can freeze and push the face off the brick, which is known as spalling, and salts can build up behind the paint and lift it.
Painting brick is also very hard to undo. Getting paint back out of the texture of a brick is slow, specialist work, and done badly it can scar the surface for good. Once a brick wall is painted, it becomes a wall that needs repainting every so often for the rest of its life.
There are good reasons to paint brick, though. The house may already be painted. An extension may have been built in a brick that never matched. Patched repairs and old staining may look worse than an even coat. A breathable masonry paint chosen for the job keeps most of the risk down, and mineral paints are another option on bare brick, though most can't go over existing acrylic coatings.
Listed homes and conservation areas
Large parts of central Cambridge sit in conservation areas, and the city has a large number of listed buildings. If your house is listed, painting brickwork that hasn't been painted before is likely to need listed building consent. In some conservation areas, extra planning controls mean that painting the outside of a house can need planning permission too.
We are decorators, not planning advisers, so the safe step is to check with your local council's planning or conservation team before you commit. Graham will raise it at the visit if your property looks likely to be affected. One customer who had a listed building's exterior decorated wrote on Checkatrade that "For heritage work they go the extra mile." If the inside of an older house needs attention too, our period property decorating page explains how we approach it.
Repainting brick that's already painted
With painted brick, the decision has already been made, and the job is about getting a finish that lasts. Loose paint is scraped and brushed off, and green growth is treated with an anti-fungal wash. On one Cambridge house the exterior was covered in mould and flaking paint before we jet washed it with an anti-fungal wash and repainted it, and the before and after photos show the difference.
Graham also checks the pointing. Crumbling or missing mortar lets water in behind the paint, so it is worth having repointing done by our master builder before decorating, ideally in a mortar that suits the age of the wall. Bare patches are primed, and the colour coats are brushed well into the mortar joints, which is where a rushed job shows.
Painting bare brickwork for the first time
If you decide to go ahead, the brick needs to be clean, sound and properly dry. New brickwork often pushes out white efflorescence salts in its first months, and these should have finished and been brushed off before painting. The first coat is usually thinned so it can soak into the brick, then full coats follow.
Deeply recessed mortar joints and rough, sandfaced bricks take noticeably longer to cover than smooth engineering brick. We paint a test area first, so you can see the colour and the texture of the finish on your own wall in daylight.
What affects the price of painting brickwork
The written quotation sets each of these out after the visit, so you can see what is painting and what is repair.
- Whether the brick is bare or already painted, and how well the old paint is holding
- The size of the walls and the height of the house
- Repointing or brick repairs needed first
- Texture of the brick and depth of the mortar joints
- Access around extensions, porches and conservatories
- The colour, and how many coats it needs to cover evenly
Talking it through with Graham
Call or send a WhatsApp, and Graham will arrange a visit at a time that suits you. Expect an honest view on whether your brick should be painted, a note of any planning question to check, and then a written quotation by email if you want to go ahead. Our decorators work across Cambridge, from Chesterton to Trumpington, and you don't pay until you're happy with the finished work.
