How to Finish a Fake Brick Wall

Purchase primer and three shades of paint: ivory, dark gray and a brick color.

Lay out a tarp to protect your carpet and tape off any areas that you do not want painted with low-tack painter's tape.

Apply a coat of primer to the wall with a paint brush or roller. Allow the primer to dry.

Apply a coat of ivory paint to the wall with a brush or roller. Allow this and all coats of paint before moving on to the next step.

Lightly sketch brick lines onto the wall with a pencil. Use a yardstick and level to keep your lines straight and even with the floor.

Mix a bit of gray into the ivory to obtain a darker shade. Mottle this darker ivory onto the pencil lines tapping it onto the wall with a piece of coarse fish tank filter. This will give the ivory paint a broken-up texture that is very similar to mortar.

Tear the sides off the painter's tape strips, resulting in 1/2-inch wide pieces of tape with torn texture on both edges.

Apply these pieces of tape over the pencil lines. The tape will protect the mortar paint and the torn edges will keep the bricks from looking too uniform and perfect.

Apply a coat of brick color to the entire wall with a paintbrush or roller.

Pour brick paint into two containers. Mix a bit of gray into one and a bit of ivory into another.

Paint some random bricks with the darker brick color and others with the lighter brick color to add variety. Brick walls are rarely all the same color.

Subtly mottle the entire wall with the dark brick color using a sea sponge. This will create the illusion of pits and imperfections in the brick surface.

Remove the tape protecting the mortar.

Paint a subtle shadow underneath and to one side if each brick in the mortar area. Keep the side that you paint the shadow (right or left) constant for the entire wall.