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How to Paint Faux Bricks on Concrete

by Stephie McCarthy

Watch how to paint bricks on concrete step-by-step

— video link —

How to paint faux bricks on concrete

This is one edge of our vintage porch before painting …

Paint bricks with no stencil

… here it is now with a faux brick effect.

Faux brick formula

By mixing a concrete dye with Kilz tinted primer, we were
able to create a stain we call 'liquid brick'.

How to paint bricks with Behr concrete stain

Any translucent concrete statin will work. Our favorite by Behr, is unfortunately discontinued.

F O R M U L A :

Using concrete dye, we created a semi-transparent stain
by adding in a teaspoon each of orange and pink Kilz primer to
1-1/2 ounces of the dye.
Small amounts of color go a long way!

Kilz tinted primer for concrete porch painting

The two shades of tinted primer we used are shown above.
We purchased these online through Walmart

How to seal painted concrete

We found our sealer on Amazon. It's professional grade.
A bit expensive, but we were able to do about 300 square feet
and had a bit left over.

Buy concrete painting sealer

It darkens the colors a bit, but
is wearing very well and truly is a fine professional finish.

Here's a new product we tried that we really loved.
A tiny bit of this powdered color goes a long way.

Tinting concrete with Solomons concrete powder

This sunny yellow helped us warm the tone of some
of the bricks. There's more on that step below.

Buy Solomons Concrete powder color

Below are the chalk paint colors we used for detailing,
shadowing, and correcting any mistakes on faux grout:

buy chalk paint by Plaid

Chalk paint helped us add a bit of dimension to the
faux bricks and is hard wearing and bonds well to concrete.

Painting fake bricks on concrete

The darkest shade, Waverly Truffle (or Plaid Java)
was used to create a
slight shadow effect on a lot of the bricks.

How to transfer art patterns to concrete:

We used a paper pattern and sidewalk chalk to create the
herringbone brick pattern. Click the image above to
see our step-by-step method for transferring art for this project.

Adding the sunny yellow highlights:

Solomon concrete dye to make faux bricks

The image above shows how we added the sunny
yellow powdered dye mixed 50/50 with water
to warm up the bricks on the left. We applied it
to one side of a lot of the bricks as a highlight.

This left a nice rosy low-light on part of the bricks too.

We also tried applying the powder
dry which looked a bit patchy. You can see it on the
compass design in the center, above.

This powder should be sealed to lock it in.