Invigorate Your Red Brick Home with these Brilliant Landscaping Tricks

Red brick houses possess an innate stateliness, but their austere facades can also appear cold or monotonous. By incorporating plants, textures and colors that complement the existing architecture, you can invigorate the curb appeal and highlight your home's finest attributes. Thoughtful landscaping choices allow you to soften sharp lines, provide visually appealing focal points, and lend warmth and character to your exterior spaces.

Whether your aim is to highlight specific architectural details, frame views, delineate outdoor "rooms," or simply introduce more life and vibrancy, the following landscaping strategies provide clever ways to show off your red brick abode. Read on for inspiration to refresh the area around your home with brilliant, brick-boosting landscape ideas.

Softening Hard Brick Lines with Plants

One of the easiest ways to temper the harsh lines of a brick facade is to incorporate vegetation. Flowering vines like clematis, honeysuckle and trumpet vine all lend breezy softness as they spread lightly across flat expanses of brick. The delicate flowers and trailing tendrils of these climbers provide pleasing contrast to the rigid surface below. Even in winter when leaves have dropped, the tracery of bare vines maintains visual interest.

Weeping specimen trees similarly help reduce the severity of brick walls. Types like weeping cherry, willow and blue atlas cedar feature intricate branching patterns that cast delicate shadows and patterns on adjacent vertical surfaces. The movement and sound from the swaying canopy also helps animate static spaces.

Container Plants for Pops of Color

While in-ground plantings blend brick with nature, colorful container gardens stationed against exterior walls make excellent focal points. Vivid tones from the flowers, leaves and pots themselves enliven the backdrop.Container plants also allow flexibility to modify arrangements seasonally or reposition items to keep displays fresh. Go bold with one scintillating red pot overflowing with annuals, or create a collection of pastel-painted vessels spilling over with petunias or trailing ivy.

Choosing Colors that Complement Red Brick

Color choices remain critical when selecting plants, pots and hardscaping materials like pavers or stone. Fortunately, the warm reddish hue of classic brick facades pairs well with a diverse palette. Warm yellow and orange flowers and foliage create harmonious, analogous color combinations. Purple and blue offer eye-catching contrast. For a monochromatic look that celebrates red brick's defining color, incorporate plants like ornamental grasses, perennials and shrubs boasting red or burgundy leaves and blooms.

Greenery in Related Brick Tones

Be sure to also consider foliage and evergreen selections displaying brick-colored hues. Japanese maples, arborvitae, chimney red spirea and barberry offer vibrancy through the seasons with their deep reddish-purple leaves. Plant them as specimens or hedges to complement existing brick while unifying the landscape through color repetition. With creative plant choices, you can develop a distinctive exterior color scheme where rich red brick sets the visual tone.

Designing Eye-Catching Hardscapes

While plants primarily lend softness and natural contrast, don't underestimate hardscaping materials for dramatically showcasing brickwork architecture. Use matching or complementary bricks to construct stunning walkways, patios and intimate walled garden spaces. Consider gravel or stone insets for decorative variation in patterns. Strategic lighting illuminates brick's vivid surface and casts intriguing shadows at night.

Fire and Water Features

Fire and water make excellent hardscaping complements to brick's solidity. Outdoor brick fireplaces, fire pits or pizza ovens surrounded by cozy seating areas create welcoming gathering places. The flicker of flames brings mesmerizing movement and warmer color. Likewise, running water from a tiered fountain or pond supplies soothing auditory effects. Glass tile accents along the water line reflect specks of light over nearby brick walls.

Blending Brick and Greenery

While hard scaping and plants each expand design possibilities with brick homes, the combination of the two elements truly unifies exterior spaces. Attach vine-strewn wooden arbors to existing walls to soften surface areas with ornamentation. Edge patio spaces and garden beds with stacked brick borders for definition before filling them with lush perennials. Use brick to construct raised planters then edge them with cheerful pansies or trailing rosemary and thyme.

Plant Selection Basics

When selecting plants, prioritize varieties offering multi-season interest through diverse textures, foliage variations and extended flowering periods. This ensures red brick remains well framed and colorful additions retain visual impact over time. Trees like crabapples, redbuds and cherry trees showcase spring blossoms followed by vivid fall color. Bushes like hydrangea and rosebushes impress with big, vivid blooms. Perennials like salvia, lavender, black-eyed Susan and ornamental grass proffer color through summer and fall while adapting well to local growing conditions.

Creative Uses Beyond Walls and Paths

Typically, brick features prominently in home construction for walkways, walls and facades. But the material's strength, aesthetics and classic vibe also lend themselves beautifully to unique landscape applications. Use brick bits to create mosaic designs along borders or as geometric stepping stone inserts in gravel pathways and patios. Construct planter boxes, pot stands or benches from irregular or broken brick for added garden character.

DIY Projects

For do-it-yourself designers, constructing brick landscape features like fire pits or short garden walls makes an enjoyable and affordable weekend project with relatively easy learning curves. YouTube provides guidance for novice brick layers to create custom furnishings that suit personal style preferences and yard dimensions. This allows homeowners to leave even more definitive design marks on their properties.

Enhancing Architecture with Brick

While the ideas above focus mainly on using landscaping to spotlight existing brick architecture, also consider using additional brick elements to selectively highlight home features. Frame doorways or accent archways by continuing brick borders, walls or distinct walkway patterns toward these entries. Paint or stain entry doors a dynamic contrasting shade to draw further attention.

Matching Existing Brickwork

When construction requires adding on new walls or surfaces, take care to match existing brickwork style, color variations and mortar texture as closely as possible for cohesion. Nothing diminishes great design faster than clashing finishes meant to blend. A keen attention to detail ensures any new brick blends harmoniously with original materials.

Unique Landscape Ideas for Red Brick Homes

• Sunken garden rooms with brick seating walls and arbors above
• Walled garden hideaways with fountain accents and artfully placed statuary
• Enclosed breezeway lined with mosaic stepping stones between brick buildings
• Rustic pizza oven housed in an exposed brick structure
• Cozy seating circle surrounding a brick fire pit

Simple DIY Upgrades for Brick Exteriors

With a keen eye for detail and dashes of creativity, red brick homes can transition from bland backdrops to captivating showstoppers accentuated through thoughtful landscaping. Closely consider brickwork architectural elements worth highlighting then develop plant and hardscape plans to accentuate those. By incorporating colors, textures and materials that celebrate the classic warmth and strength of brick, you craft exterior spaces with greater depth, interest and visual appeal.

Follow this guide when planning landscaping layouts to realize the full potential of your home's existing red brick facade. Seek inspiration from the suggested plant varieties and hardscapes that offshore alluring contrast. Don't overlook amazing DIY possibilities for custom touches. Through strategic combinations of eye-catching plants and structural features, soon your landscape will have passersby eager to uncover the clever tricks behind your design brilliance.