We had a hard time choosing bricks for our new house. Our builder, Stylemaster Homes, gave us options from Austral Bricks and PGH Bricks that were included in the base price of our house. We weren't keen on any of them, so we looked further into both manufacturer's websites and quickly found a brick at Austral that we liked: Burlesque-Charming Black. It's a smooth brick that looks as good with black mortar as it does with white. We loved it, but we knew we couldn't afford to pay for an upgrade to this brick. We'd quickly found the perfect brick for our house, but it turned out that we were only at the beginning of our brick selection journey.

We decided that black bricks were the way to go even though we hadn’t, yet, gone through the decision process that would lead us to choosing Black Pearl for the facade. Facing the reality of our champaign dreams on a lemonade budget, we went back to review the bricks that came with the house’s base price in search for the darkest colour. Two were very dark and might look good. Austral had Blackbutt in their Wilderness range, and PGH had Eclipse from their Naturals range. We um-ed and ah-ed for what felt like months, and we spent our weekends driving around new housing estates looking for a house with something that looked like either of those bricks. Both Austral and PGH gave us suggestions on where to look, but none of the houses used either of these bricks as their main colour – these darker bricks being preferred as an entry-way feature, or around the garage. The few examples we saw all looked good, but we couldn't see what they'd look like as an entire wall down the side of a house. It was frustrating and time consuming and we got to a point where we were almost past caring and considering ways to find the money for Charming Black when a friend said to us, 'What does it matter if your bricks aren’t perfect? You're going to surround the house with plants, in a year or two nobody's going to even see the bricks.'

I guess that's not the advice we expected, but our friend was right - it was crazy to spend money we didn’t have on bricks that would hardly ever be seen. So, we went back to Stylemaster and picked what looked like the darkest brick of the two on our list, Eclipse.

The decision made, we waited for the day the walls would go up.

We waited patiently.

We patiently waited.

Patiently, we waited.

Then, suddenly, our site manager he told us that our bricks, which were already a few weeks late for delivery, would take another six to eight weeks to arrive. This was during the middle of the pandemic, at that phase when so many new houses were being built in South East Queensland that building materials were becoming scarce. The delay in the bricks meant the possibility of a follow-on delay in finishing the house. It sounded like bad news on top of bad news, but our site manager had an ace up his sleeve. The supplier could give us a different type of brick, a more expensive type of brick, sooner than he could give us the bricks we ordered, and he was prepared to waive the difference in price. The new brick, Titanium (cue Sia), came from the PGH Metallic range. We quickly found a display centre with the bricks on show and said, ‘Yes! We will take that free upgrade, thank you.’

The thing about these metallic bricks is that it’s all an illusion. Titanium is, essentially, the same brick as Eclipse, the one we originally chose – it’s a medium-brown brick with a very dark brown stain. A wall of these bricks should be brown, but it's not that simple. The Metallic bricks are finished with a light glaze, and this makes all the difference. For Titanium, it means the brick could appear as any colour from blueish-black to light grey, with brown tones in the mix as well.

No two of these bricks are identical, which means that a Metallic brick wall frequently changes in appearance depending on the time of day, and even the height of the person viewing it - an effect that's not easy to photograph. What this comes down is that our exterior walls are not the initial black colour we desired, instead, they are something else - a colour that that has origins in black, but combines with and reflects the surrounding environment.

We’re sure that our original choice of Eclipse would have looked great, but Titanium is proving to be an interesting option and we can’t wait to move into the house to see these bricks at all times of day, all year round.

(3:30 pm, Winter, in the sun)

(3:30 pm, Winter, in the shade)

We may even have to change to our landscaping plans, and move the plants away from the house so the walls are more visible.