Choosing and assessing brick samples
What to look for when a sample arrives, and why one brick in the hand rarely tells you enough.
A single brick in the hand tells you almost nothing about a building.
It is the wrong scale, the wrong light, and it has no mortar.
Facing brick is a blended product. Most ranges are made from several firings deliberately mixed, so variation across a pack is the intent rather than a defect. Judge one brick and you are judging one point in a spread you have not seen — which is how a colour that looked right on a desk turns out grey across an elevation.
Four things that shift the colour.
Mortar
The single biggest influence, and the one most often left until last. Joints are roughly a fifth of the wall. A white mortar and a dark grey mortar make the same brick read as two different buildings.
Daylight
Assess outdoors, in daylight, on the orientation the brick will actually face. Office lighting flattens texture and shifts colour warm.
Scale
Variation that looks striking across three bricks can read as noise across three storeys — or disappear entirely. Area changes the judgement.
Wetting
Look at the brick wet as well as dry. Rain is not an edge case in the UK, and some faces change considerably.
From shortlist to approval.
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Shortlist on paper
Narrow to a handful using photography and technical data. There is no value in handling twenty bricks; the decision is made among three or four.
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Loose samples
Ask for several of each rather than one, so you see the spread rather than a single firing. Look at them outdoors, together, at arm's length and then across a room.
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Sample panel
A metre square minimum, built in the specified mortar and joint profile, on site if possible. This is where the real decision happens.
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Approve and record
Photograph the approved panel and reference it in the specification. It becomes the standard the delivered brickwork is measured against.
Worth the fuss.
A sample panel is the only stage where brick, mortar, joint profile and bond are seen together at something approaching real scale. Almost every dispute about brickwork appearance traces back to a panel that was skipped, built in the wrong mortar, or never formally approved.
Build it on site where you can, in the orientation the main elevation will face, and leave it up. A panel that is still standing when the brickwork goes up settles arguments that a photograph cannot.
Specify the panel, approve it in writing, and keep it until practical completion.
| Check | Why |
|---|---|
| Correct mortar | A panel in the wrong mortar tests nothing |
| Correct joint | Recessed and flush read very differently |
| Right bond | Affects the rhythm of the face across the wall |
| Mixed from packs | Shows the blend, not one pallet |
| Outdoors | Daylight, and the weather it will live in |
Ask early, and ask for more than one.
Samples take time to arrive, and the shortlist rarely survives first contact with daylight — so start earlier than feels necessary. When we curate a selection for a project, every product on the page can be requested directly from it, with delivery to your studio or the site office.