You don’t have to live with the wrong colour bricks just because they’ve been laid. Brick tinting can drastically change the colour of bricks and mortar without the need to rebuild.
Ensuring a perfect brick match when extending or renovating a property can sometimes be challenging
There are many occasions where a building which has been extended or rebuilt and you can instantly see which areas are new. Pointing out the newly built areas against the old is easy due to the bricks being a different shade or colour.
Production – The colour of bricks can vary depending on clay colour, firing temperature in the kiln and natural weathering. If you find your bricks are still being produced, you may discover that the colour does not quite match as they are not from the same production batch.
Factories closing down – Many local brick factories which supplied bricks in previous decades have now closed down, meaning bricks produced by these manufacturers are no longer being made. This can make sourcing the exact size, texture and colour brick to match an existing building difficult.
Colour not available – On occasions a size and texture match can be found, but the exact brick colour just isn’t available. This can be particularly problematic where reclaimed bricks are required, with their scarcity resulting in limited colour and quantity availability.
Brick tinting provides a simple solution for mismatched brickwork colours. Where newer bricks are contrasting in colour to the originals, a tinting solution can be applied to blend the old with the new.
Tinting is the process of directly applying a dye to the face of a brick by ‘painting’ them onsite. The dye penetrates the clay and forms a permanent bond which naturally weathers at the same rate as the original bricks. This process can also be applied to brick mortar.
Most importantly, once the treatment is complete it requires no maintenance.
A renovation and extension of a London warehouse and office building was completed using bricks with an exact size and texture match.
Once construction was complete however, the new areas stood out as they were not as dark or weathered enough. We mixed and applied a suitable tinting solution to darken the bricks and give them a weathered look, as a result you now cannot tell the new areas from the old.