Finding interior paint colors that go with red brick can be a daunting task, but it helps to look at what others have done. I’m writing this article to help you achieve the best look for you and your taste. The colors you choose to complement your specific type of brick can set the room’s entire mood.
Do you want something formal and elegant? Something exotic or loud? Maybe you’re looking for something that encourages warm conversation. Whatever atmosphere you’re going for, I’ll show you how to create it.
27 Examples of Interior Paint Colors That Go With Red Brick
1. Whiten To Brighten
White goes with everything, like black. But if you’re looking for paint to go in your sunroom, as opposed to your cozy den, white is the way to go. White is reflective and will help brighten up any room by catching all the light. This makes it perfect for a sunroom, especially if your red brick is on the darker side.
2. A Bold Black Border
You’re in love with your red brick and can’t bear the thought of covering it up. But it needs a little something extra to keep it from looking so plain. In that case, you could always go for some sparse black accents. In this example, the homeowner has lots of exposed brick in their loft. It looks as if there was once a door and they bricked it over. They used black paint to outline the old doorway. It highlights what others might consider a flaw.
3. Not Too Bright
Your bricks aren’t dark or light. They’re somewhere in the middle. But you aren’t going to compromise on the stainless steel appliances and surfaces. Not a problem! If you want to keep your kitchen from getting a washed-out, musty look, accent the windows with black paint. It breaks up the dusty brown on the bricks and adds contrast to the stainless steel.
4. Desert Paradise
If you like the subdued, sandy look of your bricks, you might want to model your whole bedroom after it. If that’s the case, go for a muted yellow, more on the brown or tan side of the color. This pairs well with exposed wooden beams or other raw woodwork. Add some warm, dim lighting and fall asleep in a bedroom somewhere hot and isolated. Egypt? The Sahara? Wherever it is, you’re home.
5. Modern Brick Kitchen
In this example, they highlight an exposed brick fireplace in the kitchen with paint. But instead of making it look more rustic, they set it apart from the rest of the kitchen with modern decor. What the lacquered wood floors and furniture can’t do on its own, the paint manages with ease. They use turquoise for the cabinets to offset light gray wallpaper. White paint on the side closest to the windows helps brighten up a shadowy corner.
6. Highlight With Subtle Contrast
You don’t have to paint the walls black and the window sashes white to make your accents stand out. In fact, a more blended color scheme can soften the ambiance of the entire room. If you’re going for something less dramatic or loud for your lighter red bricks, white is a safe choice. But in this example, the homeowner has an entire wall without a single exposed brick. An early-morning gray with white accents maintains continuity throughout the room.
7. Bricks In The Void
Like a red fox in a winter wonderland, these bricks are the one sign of life in this pristine white bathroom. This is a creative way to put your exposed interior bricks on stark display. The brick is the one area of the bathroom where guests’ eyes find some relief. The interior paint choice for this room lends a certain grounding property to the brick wall. It becomes a life raft on an endless white ocean or something warm among the frosty clouds.
8. A Cozy Blue
When most people think of the color blue, they don’t immediately think, ‘cozy’ or ‘warm’. But that’s exactly what this homeowner accomplished. The bricks in this example appear darker than usual but broken up by thicker layers of white mortar. Because of this, the bricks appear darker next to the shade of deep, navy blue. But since the homeowner used white for the ceiling, it also brightens the mortar and keeps any gloom at bay.
9. Kinda White Walls
To highlight the dark red brick of the walls, the homeowner uses white for almost all the shelving. They use black when they want to mute a shelf so as not to draw attention away from the brick. You see white walls with brick as an accent, a sort of optical illusion at first glance. To break up the white, they use a deep blue and black color scheme for the island in the middle of the room.
10. Bricks First
Almost like ‘Bricks In A Void’, the owner of this bedroom painted all the non-brick walls white. But since they have wood floors and another non-white decor, it softens the effect. This is a great way of bringing attention to the exposed brick of a room without overdoing it. ‘Bricks In A Void’ was excellent for a bathroom because it gave the impression of cleanliness. In a bedroom, it would create a more clinical atmosphere. The wood floors and colorful throw pillows give this room the homey touch we all want in a bedroom.
11. A Stormy Bedroom
If you love rainy Sunday mornings, the drizzle trickling down your window panes, then try this. The homeowner used a light gray for the walls, then black for the window sash as an accent. If they used white for the window sash instead, it would have given the room too bright a look. Pairing this color scheme with the brick creates a very Pride & Prejudice vibe.
12. Den Of Warmth
For many people, the living room is a place for their family to come together, enjoy one another’s company, and relax. How this room looks can set the mood for these family gatherings. Brighter rooms are more cheery and lively. Darker rooms ask the inhabitants to stay silent and calm. The homeowner for this living room went for a place in the middle. They use burnt ochre alongside the red bricks to give the room extra cheer. It’s warm, calm, and welcoming.
13. Quiet In The Library
This dining room/living room combo takes an interesting turn. It’s all thanks to the homeowner’s choice of interior paint. Even though the red brick on the far wall is a brighter clay color, the brown paint subdues it. The white on the other wall brightens it up a bit, but the deep brown undoes it. It gives the entire room more of a library feeling instead of a dining or living room. This paint choice makes meals and socialization a more formal affair.
14. Ye Olde Kitchen
The rustic brick and oak cabinets of this kitchen remind me of kitchens from centuries past. The homeowner chose black interior paint for the window sashes. It reminds me of soot and smoke. This kitchen is like being inside a brick-fired oven in an old-school pizzeria. The generous area of exposed brick whispers of renowned dishes. Recipes are passed down through the generations.
15. Home Office
The bright orange stain of the ceiling in this sitting room offsets the dull color of the bricks. The brick here is more brown than red and would make this room too serious without the stain choice. It looks like the homeowner wanted to go for more of a professional atmosphere than a kids’ playroom. They painted the wall a medium gray, which helps dial down the orange. The bright color keeps the room from becoming too imposing or formal.
16. Worthy of Bel-Air
The moment I saw this kitchen, it reminded me of Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. It’s got this suburban feel to it but in an upper-class kind of way. The bricks of this room are a combination of complementary colors. From burnt orange to light gray to deep red, it’s all quite subdued. The eggshell white interior paint blends well with the mortar of the bricks. Matching the paint to the marble countertop brightens the room and pulls it all together. But it isn’t that clinical, pristine bright that makes it look more like a hospital than a home. It’s a rich, comfortable white that speaks of comfortable living and family meals.
17. Drywall Art
This slender dining room doesn’t come off as particularly impressive. The solution? Accent the bricks of this tiny room with artfully placed white drywall. In derelict buildings, drywall cracks and falls away from brick after many years. The homeowner here used that to their advantage by recreating it in a way that looks fresh and modern. On the remaining wall, they use a cobalt gray to contrast the art. This assures visitors that it is a purposeful choice.
18. Hipster Cafe
If you’ve ever been to a new cafe in a historic downtown area of a big city, you recognize this cozy sitting area. This is the exact design of any hipster cafe. All it’s missing is a couple of college students wearing ear buds, tapping away on their Macbooks. The interior white paint brightens up this otherwise dark and gloomy corner. The bricks provide an interesting backdrop for selfies. The real reason this screams hipster isn’t the decor alone but the metallic black stairs.
19. Seaside Breakfast
If you have bricks that you painted white a decade ago, don’t be quick to turpentine the chipping paint. That worn, rugged look will look stunning with sea-foam green cabinets. This entire look reminds me of white sand against breaking Floridian waves. This is the perfect place to enjoy a morning cup of coffee, imagining your next vacation.
20. Turkish Hospitality
Exotic spices are wafting through the air and heavy humidity is bearing down on you. That’s the picture this interesting sitting room paints in my mind. The bricks in this example are all on the ceiling—a brick ceiling! That’s a sight in and of itself, something you don’t see every day, to be sure. But the interior paint the homeowner chose here brings the culture of the design to life. The cumin-colored walls add to the Mediterranean vibe of the whole room. It matches the stone floors, as well. The decor takes care of the rest, but the color choice of paint sets most of the mood.
21. Sunrise Dining
We’ve all woken up in the morning and opened our curtains to rays of pink sunlight before. It’s that first hour of the morning when it first starts getting warm out and it’s one of my favorite types of sunrises. They played up the pinkish-red bricks with salmon-colored interior paint. Now they can enjoy their morning coffee every day with that warm, nostalgic sunrise.
22. Retro Library
Woodstock holds a lot of great memories for a lot of people. And sometimes, it holds some memories for people who weren’t even there. We all got someone in our lives obsessed with a decade they never lived through. This homeowner reclaimed the sixties with bright white alongside hot pink appliances. It gives us that Flower Power™ ambiance we see in the movies. What makes this less hipster-modern and more Woodstock is the exposed brick. Brick always gives the impression of something older, idyllic.
23. With Sprinkles
The white interior paint in this sunroom hits hard next to the deep red bricks on the other two walls. I think it means more because of the texture of the darker color. Deep red paint next to white bricks wouldn’t achieve the same effect. As it stands, this is like a vanilla ice cream cone, all smooth and velvety. The exposed bricks are like cherry syrup topped off with rough red sprinkles for variety. Mmmm! Now I want ice cream.
24. Coffee Cake
If you’re working with red bricks that are a little more on the brown side, go for a tan or beige interior paint. In this case, the tan wall and the white ceiling bring out all the lighter tones of the bricks. The effect is something like brown sugar sprinkled over a rich, sweet cake. Cuddle up in the mornings with a good book in bed, reading by natural light as you sip sweet coffee.
25. Wine Tasting, Anyone?
Here again, we see the brick ceiling enhanced by choice of interior paint. Honestly, this velvety shade of red with the strategic lighting oozes elegance. This wine cellar slash den is something straight out of a rich 18th-century manor. I imagine Lords and Ladies in expensive silks walking with purpose. The understated pine woodwork adds to the atmosphere in a quiet way.
26. French Royalty
The furniture in this room adds to it, but that lime green paint started this. The French of centuries past loved bright, bold interior design. If you’ve seen movies portraying the French high society, you need no further explanation. Vivid colors paired with worn brick are a sure way to achieve this look in your own home.
27. Less Is More
At first glance, you might think the homeowner in this example used no paint at all. And with bricks like this, so uniform in color and texture, who can blame them? They’ve let the polished wood trim become the main accent here and it looks incredible. But if you let your eyes travel downward a bit, you’ll see that the footer trim is a dark gray. It almost melts right in with both the bricks and the flooring. This was no accident. If the homeowner left the pine trim, it would draw the eye away from the brick—exactly what they don’t want.
Conclusion
Did you enjoy this list? I loved exploring all the different ways that paint could influence brick. It was also a lot of fun to see how other homeowners showcased the brick in their homes. What did you think of this list? If you liked it, be sure to share it with your friends. I’d love to hear what you thought about these designs in the comments! Leave me your thoughts down below.