Rendering or brick painting: which is the better option?

Rendering or brick painting – making the right decision

At Loui Cement Rendering, we’ve been providing expert cement rendering services in the Sydney area for over 20 years – but there are plenty of decisions our customers make that are done before our expertise is even considered.

We try to steer you in the right direction as much as we can, but in the end there are many decisions that are best to be made on your own. Choosing whether to paint or render your brick home or structure is just one of these decisions, and can come down to many factors. These include time, cost-effectiveness, and your own aesthetic taste.

Making the right decision for whether to break out the paint rollers or get on the phone to the experts at Loui Cement Rendering can take a lot of consideration, so we’ve put together just a few of the key points of painting your brick versus rendering.

Brick painting

It should be apparent that bare brick painting is not as common as other options in the first place. There are many reasons for this – often, people just don’t like the look of painted brick, or think that it doesn’t seem as professional as smoother, higher-quality rendering.

Of course, this is up to personal taste in the end. Regular painting costs much less after all, and is something that can be done on your own in the case that you don’t want the expense of hiring a professional painter or renderer.



But there are other reasons why painting brick is not usually the favoured option for your brickwork aesthetics. This includes the fact that painted brickwork is generally weaker and thus will need to be repainted more often than stronger render. It also costs more to apply rendering over painted brickwork, if you were wanting to replace it with rendering in the future.

The benefits of rendering

It’s a fact that applying rendering to your brickwork will provide stronger and more lasting solutions – in case that’s what you’re after.

Cement render is much stronger and long-lasting than common paint, as well as offering additional benefits and protections to your home. 

Painting is purely a cosmetic process, but certain renderings provide a layer of insulated protection to your home that keeps in heat in a way that exterior painting does not, and which can impact your overall household heating costs.

Painted versus coloured rendering

If you’re erring on the side of rendering rather than painting your brick, you can also consider the choice of whether to apply specialised coloured render instead. There are differing benefits for this, too.

Painted render (as the name implies) is a coat of paint applied to the final rendering surface in the same way that brick would be painted, but on a surface that is much stronger and more lasting than your average bare brick face.



Coloured render is a different process altogether, and involves mixing special coloured cement to be rendered without the need for further painting.

Coloured rendering has certain advantages to painted render, including the fact that it is much thicker, stronger, and has far more endurance to the elements than common paint.

So which is the right choice for my brick needs?

In the end, only you can answer that!

We’ve outlined just a few of the key advantages and disadvantages to brick painting versus rendering (along with coloured rendering as well). When it comes to your brickwork, it’s always a good idea to think of how each option might benefit your needs in the long run.

Whatever your choice may be, be sure to keep in mind that the experts at Loui Cement Rendering are ready to talk through your options, as well as to provide the best and most cost-effective solutions in the area for polymer, acrylic, and cement rendering.

Get in touch now, and let us help you take that deliberation off your shoulders.