Dressing up a plain wall with brick

Some bricks can add charm to an old house. Before, this was a yellow painted wall over a wood wainscot, with the movie posters doing all the work of making the room interesting.

We faced the wall in a pale brick with the mortar washed over the joints, which softens a new brick wall considerably and keeps it from shouting. Carrying the brick around the corner and on down the stairwell was the detail that decided the room. Brick that stops dead at a floor line always reads as something applied to a wall. Brick that keeps going reads as the wall.

Same room, same wainscot, same stairwell. The wall is the part that changed.