Search for limewash brick exterior before and after and you will find hundreds of photos, almost all taken the week the painters left. The National Park Service published a Preservation Brief on coating and cleaning masonry that looks at what happens years later.

Ask why the brick was painted

Robert C. Mack and Anne Grimmer wrote Brief 1, "Assessing Cleaning and Water-Repellent Treatments for Historic Masonry Buildings," starting with a blunt claim: inappropriate cleaning and coating treatments are a major cause of damage to historic masonry. The authors note that people often equate cleaning with improvement, and without a conservator's guidance, the result can be irrevocable damage.

Find out why a building was painted. It may have covered bad repointing. Perhaps it protected soft brick or painted masonry was simply the fashion of the day, and even when bare masonry is historically correct, keeping the paint can be more practical for long-term preservation than stripping it.

Water-repellent is not waterproof

Vocabulary matters. A water-repellent coating keeps liquid water out but lets vapor pass. A waterproof coating seals both. Bituminous coatings and some elastomeric paints are grouped into that second category in the Brief. Even a high-quality water repellent slightly reduces vapor permeability, making it harder for water already inside the wall to escape, and one photo in the Brief shows an elastomeric coat on a saturated limestone cornice. It replaced roof drainage repairs and popped off, taking stone with it.

The Brief does not discuss limewash. However, its test applies to any brick finish: what does it do to vapor, and who will redo it in ten years? A conservator's opinion before the first coat costs far less than finding the answer afterward.

We tell clients: sound brick that was never painted should stay unpainted. Choosing a finish based on a photo gallery is a weak reason to change that. If the real problem is a flat, builder-grade front, the fix usually lies in the trim, openings and colors around the brick. That is the work we do in exterior design. For unpainted references, browse the brick facade library we collect from the web. Since the Brief covers historic buildings, it won't show how a specific paint ages on a new house. We have not seen hard numbers on that, and we would not trust anyone who quotes them without a long record behind them.

Source: National Park Service, Preservation Brief 1.

In 2014, Green&Blue began producing bricks with holes that can serve as homes for solitary bee species. These bee bricks are the same size as regular bricks, but they have a series of narrow holes much like the spots where solitary bees nest.

One-third of the world's food production depends on bees and other pollinators, and one in ten bee species in Europe is on the brink of extinction. This is due to climate change, the use of pesticides that are harmful to bees, and the disruption of the natural ecosystem.

Earlier this year, the city council of Brighton and Hove in England required developers to include bricks with holes for bees in the façades of buildings five meters tall and higher.

Supporters of the initiative believe that such simple solutions will improve the situation and create more opportunities for biodiversity.

But a number of experts have spoken out against it. They worry that mites and bacteria could breed in the holes and increase the spread of disease. Professor Dave Goulson of the University of Sussex believes that the holes are not big enough to make a good home for bees, and that a single brick, even one in every house, is nowhere near enough; it can only serve to ease one's conscience, with no real benefit.

I think bricks with holes may not be ideal, and they are certainly no cure-all.

But it is better to do something than nothing.

Using such bricks can make a difference, however small, alongside measures like increasing planting areas and so on. And using them widely in new buildings could help gather statistical data and prove or disprove how effective they really are.

A house by Indian architects that I particularly liked. They did a wonderful job of combining modern architecture with pleasing patterns! Two years ago I wrote a post about an ethnic trend that seemed to be emerging. This house is a perfect illustration of it.

So much vernacular, human-scaled design has been lost and replaced by a uniform international approach, in which any pattern or pleasing flourish is treated as a crime against the idea of rationality. And of course this approach dismissed "old," "naïve" art as a relic, and ethnic design seemed to threaten the globalist project.

I'm all for finding a balance. You don't have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Corbusier is great, but for all his radicalism he lacks softness. A house isn't only a machine for living—it's also a place of aesthetic experience. A house should be pleasant for a child and an elderly woman, not just the man in the suit. A home should remind us who we are, where we come from, and where we're going.

It's a special feeling to be inside well-made "historic" buildings. When you step out of the context of decades, in which my rationalist Soviet-era house was built, and into the context of centuries, it's a different scale, a different perspective.

Ethnic style speaks to me on an even broader level—the level of millennia of human history. That's why it's so fascinating to be in Indonesian villages. Traditional arts and crafts are still alive there, even as people build modern homes to please tourists. This blend gives rise to surprisingly comfortable and beautiful spaces.

Native patterns, carvings, and weaving make for such lovely details.

Here are some details in the architectural review of this house: archi.capital/howto/144

This project is several years old, but I still come back to it in my mind from time to time.

So what makes it so compelling? Which techniques made it memorable?

If all the walls were covered uniformly in brickwork, it would make your eyes glaze over, and the projecting section with the garages would steal the attention.

So I decided to set off the central part of the house with lighter plaster, and to keep it from looking like a random patch, I laid a decorative mosaic panel over it to tie it back to the mottled brick.

Notice the decorative surrounds — they don't go all the way around the windows, so as not to overload the house, but sit only at the top and bottom to emphasize the openings.

The window frames are graphite, matching the tone of the roof; you have to admit, it just wouldn't be the same with white plastic.

The result is a striking example of an understated classic — but with a twist.

Here's a look at the techniques I used in a recent project.

First, the sharp gables and stone trim already nod to the Tudor style.

Second, the refined color combination of blue shutters and reddish brick. You don't see this pairing much around here — and for good reason, in my opinion. The roof is graphite, the most discreet choice, so it doesn't pull attention away from the rest.

Third, instead of the classic decorative surrounds around the windows, there's decorative vertical brickwork.

Fourth, that same band of brick acts as an informal boundary between the plinth and the wall, and also serves as a crowning cornice under the roof.

Fifth, a clean, restrained pattern with no unnecessary curls on the wrought-iron fencing.

I think we ended up with a good example of style that speaks to the present day.

We're working on a project. The facade looks the client is drawn to include half-timbered, Tudor and Provençal styles.

We try out different variations on the house.

The client went with a striking look featuring contrasting half-timbered decor.

What makes the facade so expressive? First, the horizontal layout of the decorative cornices; second, the relief treatment of the walls with natural materials; third, the plinth built up at different levels.

The most contrasting part of the trim — is the upper, stucco floor with its dark wood (half-timber) decoration. On the lower floor, we used light decor around the window frames to make them stand out against the colorful Bavarian masonry tiles. The light stone of the plinth, with its interesting pattern, makes the house easier on the eye, both floor by floor and as a whole.

A Dutch house built in 2007.

Even though it's almost 15 years old, it still looks current and fresh.

The lower part of the building is finished in dark brick, giving it a powerful, grounded, rugged look. The top floor, by contrast, is light — wood, with geometric patterns. Especially striking is the band of glass running around the entire perimeter, separating the floors and letting daylight into the house.

On the upper floor, in particular, the light is remarkable.

You'll also notice the corner window and the original shape of the roof.

One of our latest projects.

A contemporary house with clean planken and brick tile finishes. The combination looks so good and is so widely used that it could be considered a well-established classic. The wide balcony band and stoneware plinth reinforce the building's horizontal lines, while the intricate lighting system, with its different scenarios, accentuates the geometric volume.

The scattered flecks of dark brick are what catch your eye. There are plenty of ready-made collections, including a bunch of contrasting ones (Bavarian masonry). But in those ready-made collections, the mottled bricks or clinker tiles are mixed in roughly equal proportions. To get the effect shown in the photo, you need to take one base collection and mix in a small amount of contrasting brick from another. That gives you a unique look no one else has.

You can even lay individual figures out of brick. I once wrote about historical ornamental masonry — and there's a place for it in modern architecture too!

A wooden office in Olgino, St. Petersburg.

This three-story, elongated building is built on 12 wooden frames, with a total area of 1,200 m².

The finishes use wood and brick. The long side walls are clad in brick with an interesting technique: part of the masonry runs traditionally horizontal and part is oriented vertically, with the blocks alternating in a staggered pattern. The main facade is fully glazed, and almost all of the interior partitions are glass too, creating a sense of openness and welcome.

The architects — the Conifer studio.