Finishing for our bricks

For unique facades with grey tints

Smothering involves treating the fired stones in a special smothering kiln. This is not to fire the bricks again, but to influence the colour. Due to the intense, low-oxygen atmosphere of the kiln, the gas in the kiln extracts oxygen from the bricks. Et voilà – the iron oxide colour changes to give the bricks their typical grey colour.

The precise tint is ultimately dependent on the type of brick in the smothering oven. White bricks become light grey. Smothering gives yellow, orange, red, and brown bricks a grey to dark grey tint. And a base brick with multiple colours discolours to various grey tints. These colour casts can often be intense and rich in character and are well suited to creative architecture.

The appearance of a reused brick with the quality of a new one

You can give your home that authentic look by adding old bricks to your facades. But reused stones are often difficult to find and can be expensive. Plus they never come with a quality guarantee. Thankfully, this isn’t a problem – the ‘aged’ selection from Vandersanden offers the same look without compromising quality. With our proprietary, patented forming procedure, we can create facing bricks that are scarcely distinguishable from reused stones.

How does it work? After the drying process, the unfired bricks are given extra pigments on the visible surface before being tumbled to give them that aged look. Only then do they enter the kiln. This ensures that the ‘ageing’ looks entirely natural. Aged facing are usually combined with a rural architectural style, but can also work well with modern styles for an original and creative twist.

Our range of aged bricks

The budget-friendly cousin to the aged brick

Not every brick in our range beginning with ‘Old’ is produced using the ageing procedure. Old Victorian is a tumbled brick. What’s the difference? In contrast to aged bricks, these bricks are tumbled after firing. With Old Victorian, we add cement pulp to the drum for extra colour effects. When compared to their aged cousins, tumbled bricks are slightly more rugged in their structure, but have the same authentic, timeless appearance.

All tumbled bricks

For facades with original colour combinations

By varying with clay and sand types, our seasoned brickmakers are able to create all manner of different colours. If the colour combination that you want is unavailable, we can switch to a different technique known as engobing. Engobes are colourants that comprise primarily clay minerals and oxides. By mixing them with water, we can create a liquid mass that we spray onto the unfired bricks as a thin layer. These engobes are then sintered firmly onto the surface. Engobe spots can cover the surface of the brick fully or in part. And last but not least, they come in all of the colours of the rainbow.

Extruded bricks that stand out 

Extruded bricks usually have a smooth surface and straight corners. The Impression series is a little different. The visible sides of the clay bar are impressed with different motifs, resulting in a striking rugged surface and a subtle gloss. In addition to the blue/purple Amsterdam Impression and brown/purple Praag Impression, you can find anthracite bricks such as the Brilliant Black Impression.

Extra character to break through the rigidity

Our German brickworks in Oberlausitz, close to Dresden, specialises in the production of extruded facing bricks and pavers. We have recently developed an entirely new technique that we use to enrich the surface of facing bricks –

this involves adding a mixture of engobes and cinders to the clay bar. Doing this adds special colour nuances that contrast beautifully with the smooth base of the extruded brick. A glossy effect as a finish. Greifswald, Chemnitz, and Brandenburg are the first developments using this technique on dark red, brown, and black bases respectively.

Our bricks