How to Update a Boring Painted Brick Fireplace

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Have you grown weary of your brick fireplace? Is your brick fireplace in serious need of an update? Is the painted brick just not your style?

When we moved into our first house there was a giant brick fireplace. The fireplace surround was floor to ceiling and took up the majority of the wall. A fireplace was a must in our house, but that thing was ugly.

It was HUGE and solid WHITE!

I know that white brick fireplaces are an “in” thing these days, but I’m just not a huge fan of them myself.  Especially when the white fireplace comes with a white wall and white ceilings.  That’s just too much white for me. 

I knew that something needed to be done. 

I probably could have just painted the walls and ceilings (which I did) and tolerated the giant monstrosity. But why? Why not change it? So I decided to take on the project of repainting the brick.

To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of painted brick in general. I prefer the authentic look of various natural shades. So when I choose to repaint the brick I decided it would not be one solid color. My goal was to make it look natural and I set out to do just that.

And honestly, I thought it was going to be a lot more difficult and take a lot longer than it actually did.

As soon as I made the decision to repaint the brick fireplace I got to work and removed the mantle piece. Suddenly I understood why the fireplace had been painted in the first place.  The bricks used on the fireplace were the same bricks that were used on the outside of the house, a pale yellow.  

The white was definitely better than the yellow, but I knew it could be better still.

After removing the mantle my first step was to clean the brick.  I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. I don’t think it had ever had a really good cleaning and so I removed decades of grease, grime, soot, etc. Any of that stuff could really mess up the finish. This was the least fun and most time consuming part of the whole project.

Next, I collected my supplies:

• Paint in various shades or colors (I used shades of gray)
• Sponge brushes
• Paint brush
• Palette (I used paper plates)

The color gray is super relaxing for me, so my house was being decorated in different shades of gray.  I already had 4 different cans in differing shades of gray paint from various projects so I pulled them all out and chose one of the lighter shades to be the grout color.

And I started painting.

The grout lines were the first part of the wall that I tackled.

I picked up my paintbrush and started painting.  I used a pretty large brush so it would go quickly and painted all of the grout lines.  At this point I didn’t worry about getting paint on the bricks since I knew that I would be painting them later on anyway.

Once I started actually painting I knew there was no turning back!

After all of the grout lines were painted it was time for the fun.

It was time to paint the individual bricks.

I grabbed 3 different plates and poured some gray paint onto each one, I mixed the paints together so that each paint was a different shade. Grabbing a sponge brush I started dabbing away.  I simply dabbed the brush in the paint and then dabbed it onto a brick, then another brick, and then another until I needed more paint.  At this point I was painting bricks in random order. I also tried to be careful not to get paint in the grout lines so that I wouldn’t have to touch it up later.

Next I used a lighter shade and did the same thing. Then I did it once again with the lightest shade. It was really neat to watch new shades emerge as I dabbed since each brick had different amounts of paint, giving them slightly different coloring. 

This was the other part that took some time.  But it was also the past that was the most fun.  This is where you can let your creativity can shine. 

And voila… a new brick fireplace!

I continued this process until all of the bricks were painted. When I thought I was done I stepped back and determined if there bricks that needed to be darker or lighter to be more aesthetically pleasing. I was going for a random brick effect. I repainted the few bricks that needed to be different shades and let the whole thing dry.

We made a few more updates that improved the wall drastically as well. There was a wood mantle that I stained a darker brown and then rehung. Ryan and I used a black marble to tile over the existing hearth and we installed a wood stove insert to make the old fireplace usable.

I couldn’t be happier with the final product.

May favorite part is that I did all of the painting in a single afternoon and the final product doesn’t even look painted at all. People don’t realize that the brick is painted unless they get up close and really look at the texture.

If you’re tired of your fireplace then you should definitely give this a try. Let me know how it turns out, I would love to see your before and after pics.