What colors do you paint your brick buildings? - Model Railroader Magazine

Of course, I paint my brick buildings all sorts of red, orange, brown, beige, off-white, tan and gray colors, except except "Really-Red-RED" of "fire engine".  I have been through about 4 airbrushes and never have been able to keep them unclogged, so I use either spray can or brush-on paint.  The only cheap spray (buck or two a can) for brick buildings is flat primer red or brown-- needs to be flat and not TOO red.  I have sometimes bought "designer" colors in flat beige, etc. but usually don't want too many brick buildings in the same color other than a variation on common rex or brown.

In the 40 some-odd years (some REALLY odd) I have been modeling, my most frequent technique is to paint the kit some kind or red or brown, then go over with a white, off-white or loigh-gray mortar color in an easy to sponge/wipe off water base paint.  Goop the stuff on and wipe it off the surface to leave it in the mortar and remove it from the brick face.  This MOSTLY uncovers the brick color, but not entirely, giving the brick a slight weathering.

The Messy Family house vs. Mrs. Neatnik's...

Hervil Saw Shop in an East Texas sawmill town

Sometime I want to create the effect of PAINTED brick.  Usually I paint the brick color first, do the mortar thing, and finish with a coat of the "painted" color, usually wanting to let some of the brick color and texture show through, as if the paint is getting old and wearing off.  I made the painted white brick more obvious here by having only the street front and a dozen scale feet of the side of the building painted, while leaving the back natural brick.

I shouldn't have let the Walthers GOO (r) discolor the joint at the corner.  Someday I need to touch it up. 

Another "painted brick" project-- Wayne Implement Company.  I used several coats of a poorly-covering white water-color wash over the read brick.

A new technique I learned within the past year from Model Railroader-- spray-painting the brickwork in more-or-less mortar color, then coloring the SURFACE of the brick with artists' colored pencils.

This is unfinished.  I still need to add the canopy over the ice dock and somedown disguise the crack between the kitbotched stories of the structure. 

Brick is not always red or brown--although I can't tell for sure whether this baggage room at Galveston is built from an off-white brick, or is a common old red-or-brown brick painted off-white to try to match the station/office building. 

 This is a future project-- I have the DPM modular pieces to build it, but it is for a section of layout that won't be built for a year or two and I am not sure of the big station building.  It will be interesting to work out the color.  Probably I will want the color of the baggage room ALMOST to match the station building-- to suggest the two buildings were built at different times, in an attempt to coordinate the appeaances, yet still having subtle differences.