Brick textures: how the face is made, and how it reads
How the main brick-making methods change the face of a building, and how to choose between them.
Two bricks can share a colour, a size and a durability rating and still look nothing alike on a building.
The difference is almost always how the face was formed.
Texture is the property that survives the journey from sample to elevation. Colour shifts with light and mortar; a crisp arris or a heavily creased face does not. It is also the property most often left out of a specification, which is how a project ends up with the right colour and the wrong building.
Five ways of making a face.
Wirecut
181 in our rangeHow it's made. Clay is extruded as a continuous column and cut to size with wires.
How it reads. Even, consistent and slightly drawn along its length. The most uniform of the common faces, and the most economical to produce at volume.
Typically used for. Large elevations where consistency matters and the budget is doing real work.
Stock
140 in our rangeHow it's made. Clay is thrown into moulds dusted with sand, giving a folded, sanded face.
How it reads. Soft-edged with visible creasing and colour movement. Reads as traditional without being obviously handmade.
Typically used for. Conservation areas, infill in older streets, anywhere a wirecut would look too machined.
Pressed
31 in our rangeHow it's made. Clay is pressed into a mould under pressure, often with a frog.
How it reads. Sharp arrises and a dense, smooth face. Crisp and formal at close range.
Typically used for. Precise detailing, fine joints, and elevations where the brickwork is meant to look exact.
Handmade
15 in our rangeHow it's made. Clay is thrown into a mould by hand, one brick at a time.
How it reads. The most variation of any face — creased, folded, no two identical. Catches light unevenly across a wall.
Typically used for. Heritage work and schemes where the elevation is meant to have depth and movement.
Waterstruck
5 in our rangeHow it's made. Moulds are wetted rather than sanded, so the clay releases on a film of water.
How it reads. Smoother and slightly glossier than a stock, with soft edges but no sand bloom.
Typically used for. Contemporary schemes wanting a soft face without the rustic reading of a sanded stock.
What actually decides it.
Viewing distance
Texture that reads beautifully at arm's length can disappear at thirty metres. A handmade face on an upper storey is often money spent on something nobody will see.
Context
Next to Victorian stock brickwork, a wirecut will look machined however well the colour is matched. The face has to belong to the street.
Mortar joint
A soft-edged brick with a recessed joint reads very differently from the same brick flush-pointed. Texture and joint are one decision, not two.
Budget and volume
Handmade is slower to produce and priced accordingly. On a large elevation the difference is significant enough to shape the whole scheme.
Lead time
The more hand-worked the process, the longer the run. Worth confirming early rather than at the point of order.
Blending
Textures can be mixed deliberately — a stock field with pressed detail, for instance — but it needs designing rather than discovering on site.
Getting it into the specification.
Name the texture, not just the product
"Stock" or "wirecut" in the clause gives a substitution something to be assessed against. A product name alone does not.
Approve a panel, not a brick
Texture only really declares itself across a course or two with mortar in place. A sample panel settles arguments a single brick cannot.
Where the texture matters to the design, say so and say why. A contractor pricing alternatives needs to know whether the sanded face is the point of the elevation or simply what happened to be selected.