Hi Neryl, Thanks for asking - I painted it and I just love it. As the staircase is in the middle of the house, painting the walls white has made it much brighter and the large colorful painting looks great. The very large gaudy gold framed mirror has had a makeover as well and looks fab also painted white. I notice I put this post up 2 years ago and since then, thanks to Houzz for all the great inspiration, the renovations have been fairly intense - new kitchen, walk in pantry, 2 new bathrooms, laundry, kitchenette, new roof, solar system, walk in robe, 5 renovated bedrooms, polished floors, fully airconditioned, restored cottage which is now my she shed, landscaping etc. etc. Am now broke but happy.

Unless you have the money to update everything else to better complement the bricks, painting them will give you a much more updated look. Over the past 18mths I’ve been working on the front and landscape of my current house, including painting the bricks and it has made the world of difference! I’ve attached a before and after photo! Good luck.

You should have what you prefer . The first , brick , pattern looks busier and the second looks plainer . Either looks fine to me , though as a personal choice I like a more streamlined look .

@Lizzy B all went smoothly. the most time consuming part was installing all the battens into the brick followed by corner ends. This was harder because I cladded not only the wall shown with the 3 windows but also the whole front of the house which includes multi steped recession into the front door meaning lots of internal ans external corners as you will see in this next photo. most people would usually just paint this recession to door area rather than clad it because of how fiddly it is and so many short cut boards but i decided if i was going to do it, I would do it all prroperly. it all still looks fantastic and as if i did it yesterday.