Home › Blog › Should You Seal or Paint Brick
July 15, 2026 · Brick Care
Most sound brick in Grand Rapids needs neither sealing nor paint. Brick is built to shed water and dry itself. If you do treat it, use a breathable penetrating silane or siloxane repellent that keeps liquid water out while letting the wall breathe. Never paint exterior brick in this climate and never use a film-forming sealer. Both trap moisture, and trapped moisture is what freeze-thaw turns into spalling.
Every spring someone calls us with the same plan. The brick looks a little tired, a little chalky, maybe darker in spots after a wet winter, and the thought is to paint it a clean white or seal it up tight so water stops getting in. It sounds right. It usually is not. In a freeze-thaw climate like ours, the instinct to wrap brick in a coating is the fastest way to wreck it. The brick has survived eighty winters doing what it was designed to do. The coating is what fails.
So before you buy a five-gallon pail of anything, here is how a mason thinks about sealing versus painting versus leaving well enough alone, and why the answer in West Michigan is different than it would be in a dry climate.
Fired clay brick is porous by design. It takes on a little water when it rains, then releases it back out as vapor when the weather turns. That in-and-out cycle is normal and healthy. The mortar joints do the same. As long as water can leave as fast as it arrives, the wall stays sound for generations. Trouble starts only when water gets trapped and cannot dry out.
That is the single fact that decides this whole question. Anything you put on the surface either lets the wall keep breathing or it does not. A breathable penetrating repellent lets vapor pass. Paint and glossy film sealers do not. In a mild, dry climate a film might get away with it. Here, where the National Weather Service in Grand Rapids logs forty to sixty freeze-thaw days a winter, trapped water has forty to sixty chances a year to freeze, expand, and blow the face off your brick.
Painted brick photographs beautifully. Living with it is another story. Paint is a film. It sits on the surface and seals the outside face while doing nothing to stop moisture reaching the brick from behind, from the mortar joints, from a leaky sill, from vapor driving out of a heated house in January. Once that moisture is behind the paint, it is stuck. It freezes. It expands. It pushes the brick face outward until it flakes off in sheets, taking your paint with it.
That flaking is spalling, and painted brick spalls faster than bare brick, not slower. The other problem is that paint is a one-way door. Once brick is painted, it wants to be repainted every five to ten years forever, and stripping it back to clean masonry is expensive, messy, and rarely perfect. We have never once been glad a Grand Rapids house was painted brick. We have been called to repair plenty of them.
Sealing is a different animal from painting, as long as you use the right product. The masonry standard for a freeze-thaw climate is a penetrating water repellent, a silane or siloxane that soaks into the pores of the brick and mortar and bonds inside them. It repels liquid water, so wind-driven rain beads and runs off, but it stays fully permeable to water vapor, so the wall still dries from the inside out. Manufacturers who make these products, like the technical guidance from masonry water-repellent makers, are explicit that breathability is the whole point. A film former traps moisture and causes the spalling, cracking, and efflorescence it was supposed to prevent.
Done right, a penetrating repellent is nearly invisible. It does not gloss up the wall or darken it much. It just makes water behave. And it is not permanent, which is fine. Expect to reapply roughly every seven to ten years depending on exposure. That is the honest trade: real protection that respects how brick works, renewed now and then, versus a coating that looks dramatic and fails dramatically.
Here is where we land with most homeowners. Sound, well-drained brick on the body of a house usually does not need sealing at all. Save your money. The cases where a breathable repellent earns its keep are the exposed ones: a chimney catching weather from every side with no roof over it, a parapet or a low garden wall taking water from the top, a west or south wall that eats the brunt of driven rain, or freshly repaired brick and new tuckpointing you want to protect while it settles in. In those spots a penetrating repellent is a smart, low-risk move.
What sealing cannot do is fix a problem. If brick is already spalling, if mortar joints are open, if a chimney crown is cracked or flashing is leaking, a repellent just paints over the symptom and traps the water underneath. The order matters. Repair the masonry and stop the water getting in first. Then, and only then, consider a breathable repellent to shed what is left. Coating a wall that is actively leaking is how a small repair becomes a rebuild.
If you remember nothing else: do not paint exterior brick in Grand Rapids, and do not seal it with anything that forms a film or a shine. If you seal, seal with a breathable penetrating silane or siloxane, and only where the exposure justifies it. Most of your brick is happiest left bare and kept in good repair, with sound mortar joints and clean, working drainage around the house. Brick that can breathe and shed water outlasts every coating anyone has ever brushed onto it.
Not sure whether your brick needs sealing, repair, or just a good look? A senior mason walks the walls, checks the joints and drainage, and tells you straight what the brick needs and what it does not. Old-world standards, no pressure.
Most sound, well-drained brick in Grand Rapids does not need sealing. Brick is already designed to shed water and dry out. Sealing makes sense in specific cases, a chimney or parapet taking heavy weather, a wall over a problem area, or freshly repaired masonry. When you do seal, use a breathable penetrating silane or siloxane repellent, never a film-forming coating that traps moisture.
Painting exterior brick in a climate like West Michigan carries real risk. Paint forms a film on the surface, and brick needs to breathe and dry from the inside out. When moisture gets behind the paint, and in this climate it will, it cannot escape, so it freezes, expands, and pops the brick face off. That is spalling. Paint also locks you into repainting every 5 to 10 years, and it is nearly impossible to reverse cleanly.
For West Michigan brick, the right product is a breathable penetrating water repellent, a silane or siloxane that soaks into the pores and repels liquid water while still letting water vapor pass out. It leaves no shiny film and does not change the look much. Avoid glossy topical sealers and any product that forms a surface film, because those trap the very moisture that freeze-thaw turns into spalling.
A quality penetrating silane or siloxane repellent on Grand Rapids brick typically lasts around 7 to 10 years before it needs reapplying, depending on exposure and the product. Chimneys and weather-facing walls wear faster than sheltered ones. A film-forming or painted surface fails differently and worse, it peels and flakes and can drive spalling, which is why penetrating repellents are the masonry standard here.
A breathable penetrating repellent can slow spalling by keeping bulk water out while still letting the brick dry, but it will not fix brick that is already spalling or reverse damage that has started. If the face is flaking, the fix is replacing the failed brick and correcting whatever is feeding water into the wall, not coating over it. Sealing the wrong way, with paint or a film, actually causes spalling.
A chimney is one of the few spots where sealing is often worth it, because it takes weather from every side and has no roof over most of it. Use a breathable penetrating repellent, not paint, and make sure the crown, flashing, and mortar joints are sound first. Sealing a chimney that already leaks through a cracked crown just traps the water. Fix the masonry, then repel the water.
Related field notes: Brick Spalling: What Causes It and How to Fix It, Efflorescence on Brick in Grand Rapids, Tuckpointing vs Repointing.