Brick Residential houses – what is your favourite exterior colour scheme?

buildingMyDream said:

Hi all
I hope I am allowed to post this question and hope that it is in the correct thread. I am just wondering what everyone’s favourite colour schemes for BRICK residential houses. So, brick colour (also shade), roof colour, guttering and piping, windows, entrance and garage doors.
If anyone has some pictures to share that would be greatly appreciated as well

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In the Frank Lloyd Wright houses in Chicago, it's not about the bricks per se; rather, it is with the mortar courses in between.

Frank Lloyd Wright famously insisted that the VERTICAL sections of mortar be colored to match the color of the adjacent bricks. The horizontal courses were usually left "white", to contrast with the red of the bricks above and below.

He does this in order to increase the sense of HORIZONTAL MOVEMENT in the architecture (an idea he sort of adopted from traditional Japanese architecture).

You can see excellent examples of this in Chicago. I post a few examples, taken from flickr.

Robie House 1909 (University of Chicago). Notice the strong horizontal movement.











Heurtley House, 1902 (Oak Park). Notice that the same principle is also applied to the mortar courses in the archway.

OakRidge said:

Frank Lloyd Wright specifically chose a type of brick known as "Roman" brick due to its dimensions. Unlike the traditional sizes the Roman brick is stretched horizontally giving the structure a more horizontal look.

An example of a Roman structure using the brick:

An ancient tomb on Appian Way in Rome featuring extensive Roman brickwork in opus lateritium.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_brick

You can actually see the brick used in the wall you posted. The arches above the openings would be composed of the "Roman" brick.

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Very interesting. I see. Yes, I am familiar with the more horizontal forms of Roman brickwork, but I had thought that they were more "flat" than the ones FLW used. But yes, I do see it in the picture of the archway.

But I think what really gives the horizontal feel to the brickwork is his matching the color of the mortar to the left and to the right of each brick, while leaving the ones at the bottom and at the top uncolored. So, although the flatness of the Roman bricks do contribute to it, I think that the coloring of the mortar is what truly gives it a monumentally horizontal feel.

He didn't exactly borrow this idea from Japanese architercture. But the influence/prominence of horizontal lines is quite extensively documented.

http://www.nshss.org/scholarships/academic_papers07/leneweaver.pdf