The perfect brick for a perfect facade

Choosing the right brick is an important decision, as it really does determine the look of a home. But choosing the right brick to match your home is not always easy. With our help, you can get it right.

A modern home, a classic country home, or a residential construction project. Every construction style has typical characteristics that can be emphasised by opting for the right brick. A slender, long brick, for example, will help to accentuate the sleek, measured lines and shapes of a modern home or construction project. With a classic construction style, a small, rustic brick will be more suitable. But don’t let this impede your creativity! Why not combine a modern finish with a classic brick, or vice versa? You choose!

The colour selector

The texture of a brick also gives your home a completely unique look. A brick gets its texture from the way in which it is processed. Let’s look at the most common types of brick side by side:

The textured structure of the stock brick provides fine shadow lines that give more depth to the colour of your façade.
Waterstruck, the lightly structured brick, is a special moulding technique, whose name references the use of (atomised) water. The waterstruck brick is relatively smooth and has less texture than the stock brick.
You can give your home some authenticity by covering your façade in authentic old brick. Reused bricks are hard to find and expensive, but at Vandersanden , you can find new bricks with an aged look, which is the result of a unique moulding process. As the plasticity of the unfired product is greater than that of the fired version, the brick takes on a very natural looking ageing. This gives nostalgic bricks more of a look of reused stone.

Four types of brick

The colour of the façade largely determines the look. A modern home can be given a sleeker appearance by using a single-colour, uniform brick. A more old-fashioned red brick gives a rural home a typical authentic character. The colour of a fired brick depends on the clay mixture that is used. Clay comprises different minerals, including iron, calcium, and manganese. Varying the clay and sand types creates a wide range of different colours. Please note that the colour can have an effect on the price. Raw materials used for red and yellow stones are easily found in natural settings, but a special kind of sand, pigment, or firing process is needed for grey tones, which makes them somewhat more costly.

The colour for you

We were attracted to this dark Morvan waterstruck brick straight away. The texture, soft glaze combined with a robust surface makes it perfect for our extension.

The client

Depending on the brick size used, a facade could be as much as 10 to 20% joint. As such, the joint is very important to the final look of the facade. The colour of the joint mortar is also important. Lighter joints make a façade appear lighter, while darker joints have the opposite effect. Black joints are very popular at the moment, and give a facade a warmer appearance . By contrast, white joints give a more pronounced line interplay. The colour of the brick is also given more intensity. Prefer something different? Opt for tone-on-tone joints for a more refined effect, or perhaps even a joint-free effect.

At Vandersanden, we have nearly a century of experience in developing new mixtures and techniques for colouring bricks. The result? More than 100 unique bricks, each with their own look and feel. Use our colour selector to quickly and easily find your favourite brick. You can filter by colour or style and see an example of every brick, the joint effect, or even download 3D textures. The architect can import these 3D textures to create a realistic simulation of your home or project.