Exposed Brick and Brick Tile Cladding

Exposed brick is one of the few finishes that looks better with age. It hides small knocks, takes warm light beautifully, and gives a room or a facade a sense of honesty that paint rarely achieves. In India it carries a double history: the red-brick institutions and railway buildings of the colonial era, and the modern Indian architecture of the 1960s and 1970s, when architects in Ahmedabad, Kerala and elsewhere left brick unplastered on purpose. Today the look is back in cafés, offices, living rooms and elevations — but most of it is not brickwork at all. It is brick tile cladding: thin slices of fired clay stuck to an ordinary plastered wall.

Both routes work, and both fail in predictable ways. Real exposed brick fails when ordinary site bricks — uneven, salty, chipped — are left bare in the hope that they will look rustic; within a season the wall shows white salt bloom, damp patches and crumbling joints. Brick tiles fail when they are fixed with the wrong adhesive onto a damp wall, grouted carelessly, or sealed with a glossy coating that traps moisture. This article explains how each system is built, what sizes and bonds to use, how joints and sealers change the result, how to deal with damp and efflorescence, and what each option costs in October 2026.

A short history of brick left bare

Fired brick is one of the oldest building materials in the subcontinent. The cities of the Indus Valley civilisation, such as Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, were built largely of standardised burnt bricks, and archaeologists have long noted how consistent their proportions were. Over the following millennia, brick was used for stupas, temples and fortifications, often plastered or faced with stone. Mughal and Rajput builders used thin, flat lakhori bricks laid in lime mortar, usually finished with lime plaster, so the brick was the structure rather than the surface.

The red-brick look that many Indians associate with exposed brick came with nineteenth- and early twentieth-century public buildings — colleges, railway stations and civic halls built in fine, uniform facing bricks with neat joints. After independence, a generation of architects made unplastered brick a statement of honesty and economy. Louis Kahn's Indian Institute of Management campus in Ahmedabad turned brick arches, deep openings and shadow into monumental architecture, and Laurie Baker in Kerala used exposed brick, rat-trap bond and brick jaali to build cheaply and coolly. Both are covered in more detail elsewhere on this site. The modern interior trend — industrial lofts, cafés and feature walls — borrows this look, but usually builds it in thin brick tiles rather than solid walls.

Three ways to get an exposed brick wall

There are three distinct systems, and confusing them is the source of most disappointments. A new exposed brick wall is built from selected facing bricks, laid and pointed with the face left bare; it is the wall itself. A revealed brick wall is an existing wall whose plaster has been removed to show the brick behind; it is a gamble on what lies underneath. Brick tile cladding — also called brick slips or brick veneer — is a 10–25 mm thick facing of fired clay tiles fixed to a plastered or boarded wall with adhesive, then grouted to look like brickwork. The table compares them.

Brick-look wallpaper and moulded PVC panels are included for completeness, but they are not brick and do not age like it. Lightweight concrete or GRC brick-pattern panels can be convincing from a distance in a shop or a set, but a real clay surface — with its slight colour variation, porosity and fired texture — is what makes exposed brick worth doing.

Brick sizes and quality: what to ask the supplier

Indian brick sizes are set by IS 1077 (common burnt clay building bricks). The modular brick is 190 × 90 × 90 mm, which with a 10 mm joint becomes a 200 × 100 × 100 mm module; the long-established non-modular or traditional brick, still very common, is about 230 × 110 × 70–75 mm, giving the familiar nine-by-four-and-a-half-by-three-inch proportions. Facing bricks — those intended to remain exposed — are covered by IS 2691 (burnt clay facing bricks), which sets tighter limits on dimensions, warpage, water absorption and efflorescence than for common bricks. In practice most fair-faced work in India uses machine-made wire-cut bricks, which have sharp arrises and consistent faces, or good table-moulded bricks selected by hand.

Fly-ash bricks, AAC blocks and concrete blocks are excellent walling materials, but they are not facing materials. Their surfaces are uniform, grey and absorbent, and they are designed to be plastered. Where an existing wall in a modern flat is built in AAC, plaster removal will reveal blocks, not brick — which is why a revealed-brick finish is usually only possible in older load-bearing or brick-infill buildings, and only after a trial patch.

Bonds and joints: the details that make brick look right

The pattern in which bricks are laid is the bond. Stretcher bond — every brick showing its long face, each course shifted by half a brick — is the standard for 115 mm half-brick walls and for almost all slip cladding. English bond alternates a course of stretchers with a course of headers (the short ends), and Flemish bond alternates headers and stretchers within each course; both belong to full 230 mm walls and look more traditional. Stack bond, with joints aligned vertically, looks modern but has no structural overlap and should be used only in cladding or with reinforcement as an engineer specifies. Laurie Baker's rat-trap bond lays bricks on edge to create a cavity, saving bricks and improving insulation; it is a structural choice to be made with an engineer, not a finish.

The mortar joint matters as much as the brick. It makes up roughly a sixth of the visible wall area, and its colour, depth and profile change the whole character of the surface. A flush joint, struck level with the face, looks calm and is easy to clean. A weathered (struck) joint slopes outward to shed water and is the best choice for exteriors. A recessed or raked joint, pressed back 6–10 mm, throws a shadow line and makes each brick read individually — dramatic indoors, but on an exposed facade in a heavy-rain city it holds water on each ledge. A concave or bucket-handle joint is tooled with a rounded iron, compacting the mortar; it is durable and a sensible default.

Building a real exposed brick wall

A new fair-faced wall is built like any other brick wall, with three differences: the bricks are selected, the mason works cleaner, and the joints are finished as the wall rises. Bricks should be soaked before laying (as standard Indian practice and IS 2212, the code of practice for brickwork, describe) so they do not suck water out of the mortar, but laid surface-dry so they do not smear. Cement–sand mortar of 1:6 is common for interior half-brick partitions and 1:4 to 1:5 for exposed external work, though the mix should follow the structural designer's specification. Joints are kept 8–12 mm, struck or tooled when the mortar is thumb-print hard, and the face is brushed clean the same day; dried mortar smears can only be removed later with careful acid washing, which itself risks staining.

Exposed brick walls also need the details that plaster normally hides. Electrical conduits and switch boxes must be planned before the wall goes up, because chasing a fair-faced wall afterwards leaves a scar that cannot be patched invisibly. Lintels over openings can be exposed RCC, a steel angle, or a brick soldier course on a concealed lintel. Where the wall meets an RCC column, a fine movement joint or a neat shadow gap avoids the crack that otherwise appears. On facades, a half-brick wall of exposed brick is not waterproof in driving monsoon rain; external walls in coastal Gujarat, Mumbai or Kerala usually need either a full 230 mm wall, a cavity, or a water-repellent treatment to keep the inside face dry.

Fixing brick tile cladding (slips)

Brick slips are fixed like heavy wall tiles. The background must be sound, flat (within about 3 mm under a 2 m straight edge) and dry. Cement plaster is ideal; painted walls must be scraped back to plaster, and gypsum or POP surfaces need a suitable primer or should be avoided for heavier slips. Slips are fixed with a polymer-modified cementitious tile adhesive — classes C1 or C2 under IS 15477, with C2 or better for exteriors, larger slips and areas exposed to sun and rain — applied with a notched trowel and back-buttered so there are no hollow spots. Spacers or a laid-out batten keep course heights consistent. After the adhesive has cured, the joints are filled with a pointing mortar or a cementitious grout from a grout bag, tooled to the chosen profile, and brushed clean.

Interior versus exterior slips

Indoors, almost any well-fired slip on a C1 or C2 adhesive works, and the main choices are aesthetic: colour blend, texture and joint. Outdoors, the slip must be frost-free and low-absorption (frost is irrelevant in most of India, but water absorption, salts and thermal movement are not), the adhesive must be at least C2 with deformability for sun-exposed walls, and movement joints should be provided at storey levels, at changes of background and at intervals the adhesive manufacturer specifies — typically every 3–4.5 m on large elevations. Heavy cladding high on a building is a safety matter: if a slip comes away at the third floor it falls on someone. For anything above ground floor, the fixing system should be approved by the facade or structural consultant, and some will specify mechanical restraint or a proprietary rail system rather than adhesive alone.

Corners, openings and sockets

The give-away of a fake brick wall is the corner. Real brick turns the corner as one piece; slips need L-shaped corner pieces (with a return of about 90–110 mm), not two flat slips butted at 45 degrees. Window and door reveals need the same corner slips, or a deliberate frame in stone, metal or timber. Switch and socket boxes must be brought forward to the finished face of the cladding — a box left 30 mm deep behind a slip wall cannot hold its switch plate safely — and the cut around it should land on a joint where possible.

Sealing, efflorescence, damp and dust

Clay is porous, and brick walls breathe. That is part of their charm and the source of their main problems. Efflorescence — the white, powdery bloom that appears on new brickwork — is soluble salt carried to the surface by water and left behind when the water evaporates. It comes from the bricks, the sand, the cement or the ground, and it is a symptom of moisture moving through the wall. On new work it often appears in the first few months and fades with dry brushing; persistent efflorescence means a continuing water source, such as rising damp, a leaking pipe, a roof or parapet defect, or rain driving through the wall.

Sealers should be chosen to let the wall breathe. Indoors, a matt, water-based penetrating sealer or a clear acrylic in a matt finish reduces dust and makes the wall wipeable. Outdoors, a silane or siloxane water repellent penetrates the clay and mortar and repels rain while allowing water vapour to escape. Glossy film-forming coatings and ordinary plastic emulsions look wet and artificial, peel in sun, and trap salts behind the film, which then push the coating off. Any sealer should go on only after the wall has dried completely and any efflorescence has been brushed off.

What exposed brick and brick cladding cost (indicative October 2026)

The prices below follow the ranges already used on this site in the industrial interiors and stone cladding guides. Brick cladding tiles or slips typically cost about ₹150–350 per sq ft installed, real brick slips cut from fired bricks ₹200–350, and reclaimed slips ₹250–500. A new exposed facing-brick wall costs about ₹180–400 per sq ft including pointing, against an ordinary plastered and painted wall that most people would otherwise build. Revealing existing brick by removing plaster is mostly labour, about ₹40–100 per sq ft plus sealing, but works only where the brickwork behind is good. Sealers, corner pieces, cutting around openings, scaffolding on facades and the waste allowance of 5–10 per cent should all be visible in the quotation.

Design ideas: where brick works best

Indoors, brick is strongest as one surface rather than everywhere: a single feature wall behind a sofa, dining table or bed; the back wall of a café counter; a passage or staircase wall that catches grazing light from a cove or a wall-washer. It pairs naturally with warm timber, black metal, concrete and lime-plaster whites, and with plants. A whitewashed or limewashed brick wall softens the look for bedrooms and Scandinavian-leaning homes. Outdoors, brick suits boundary walls, verandah walls, gate pillars and facades of low-rise homes, and brick jaali walls — bricks laid with gaps — give privacy and breeze at the same time. On sunny west walls, brick's thermal mass and texture are an advantage, provided the wall is protected from driving rain.

Lighting makes or breaks a brick wall. Light from directly in front flattens the texture; light grazing down from a ceiling cove 150–300 mm away from the wall, or from a recessed linear fitting, picks out every joint and shadow. Warm white of 2700–3000 K brings out the red and orange tones of clay. Recessed joints exaggerate the effect; flush joints keep it gentle. Aaditya Interior generally avoids cladding every wall of a room in brick — the material is visually heavy, and a single well-lit wall does more.

Where brick is heading

Brick is having a quiet revival for reasons beyond style. Architects are exploring thin, long, Roman-format bricks for crisp modern facades; brick jaali and perforated brick screens for shading west walls; and lime mortars that make bricks reusable at the end of a building's life. Manufacturers are improving kiln technology and offering wire-cut facing bricks and slips in a broader range of colours. At the same time, fly-ash and AAC blocks have taken over most structural infill, so exposed brick is becoming a deliberate finish rather than a default material — which, if it means better bricks and better detailing, is no bad thing. Prefabricated slip panels, where slips are factory-bonded to boards or rails, are also appearing for faster, safer facade installation.

Rules for exposed brick and brick cladding

• Choose the system first: new fair-faced wall, revealed brick, or slips — and price them separately.
• Use facing bricks or slips from one batch, and order 5–10 per cent extra for blending and cuts.
• Ask for water absorption and efflorescence test results (IS 3495) before approving facing bricks.
• Fix slips on sound, flat, dry cement plaster with C1/C2 polymer adhesive and full coverage — never spot-fix.
• Use L-shaped corner slips at every external corner and reveal.
• Choose weathered or concave joints outdoors; keep recessed joints for interiors.
• Plan conduits, switch boxes and TV brackets before cladding; bring boxes forward to the finished face.
• Let the wall dry fully, brush off efflorescence, then apply a matt, breathable sealer — never a glossy film.
• For any cladding above ground floor, get the fixing system approved by a facade or structural consultant.

Frequently asked questions

Is brick tile cladding cheaper than a real brick wall?

On an existing wall, yes: slips at about ₹150–350 per sq ft installed avoid building a new wall and add only 15–30 mm of thickness. For a new partition, a fair-faced brick wall at about ₹180–400 per sq ft including pointing can cost about the same as a plastered wall plus slips, and it is the real thing.

How do you stop white powder on an exposed brick wall?

The white powder is efflorescence — salt left by evaporating water. Brush it off dry, do not wash it with a lot of water, and find the water source: rising damp, a leak, rain penetration or construction moisture. Once the wall has dried, apply a breathable sealer. If it keeps returning, the moisture problem is still there.

Can brick cladding be used in a kitchen or bathroom?

In a kitchen, yes, away from the hob or behind glass, and sealed so oil can be wiped off; recessed joints are hard to clean there. In a bathroom, only outside the wet zone and with a sealed, low-absorption slip; inside the shower, tiles or stone are more practical.

Can I remove plaster to expose the brick behind?

Sometimes. In older buildings with good brickwork, careful hacking, raking and repointing can reveal an attractive wall for about ₹40–100 per sq ft plus sealing. In most modern flats, walls are AAC or fly-ash block, so there is no brick to reveal. Always try a small trial patch first, and never cut into RCC columns, beams or shear walls.

Which sealer is best for an exposed brick wall?

Indoors, a matt, water-based penetrating or acrylic sealer. Outdoors, a silane or siloxane water repellent. Avoid glossy film-forming coatings and ordinary emulsions, which trap moisture and peel.