For many projects there are numerous steps in the selection of materials. Even though it seems like it should be pretty straightforward there a a number of things that need to be considered and there are things that can go wrong making the process more complicated.

Here is an example of how we selected brick and mortar colors for a project that is currently under construction. This specific project is a 4 story office building with 3 1/2 stories of brick on the facade. There are 3 colors of brick and 2 colors of mortar that were chosen for the project, and on top of that, there are a handful of other materials that make up the rest of the exterior facades. These other materials include precast concrete lintels and trim, fiberglass windows, aluminum doors & frames, caulking, stucco and colored metal trim.

STEP 1 - Develop a building design

In this project we determined that we wanted the base of the building to feel heavier, so we chose to make this a darker color. The middle 2 floors are also brick and we chose a lighter color. To make the building feel progressively lighter in weight as it grows up, we chose to make the top level the lightest color. In order to enhance the window openings in the building, we chose a 3rd color of brick, the lightest color of the the 3, to create large panels that give the sense of the windows being larger element in the design.