Wood Panelling and Brick Slips

Two classic organic materials together, with the same goal - making sure that walls are not plain and boring - texture and timeless class.

The Popularity of Panelling

In the 2020s, wooden panelling has seen a huge surge in popularity, with 3 major styles at the forefront:

Slatted

Acoustic Panelling and Brick Slips Together

Most often this is with acoustic panels - wall panels which come with a felt backing, usually in black, behind a selection of wood colours.

Victorian or Shaker Style

This style now comes in handy kits, and involves fixing together squares or rectangles onto walls and can include dado railing within the style to segment it. Victorian style uses decorative wood to add extra detail, whilst shaker is wider, with no detail on the wood itself.

Shiplap

This style involves adding strips of wood to completely cover the wall, usually up to around a metre high and often with a decorative finish at the top.

This rise has been mostly due to the DIY innovations, such as packs for shiplap and shaker styles, and full acoustic panels. These have allowed people to create more sophisticated and interesting walls, without the need for tradespeople and with the comfort of instructions to follow when installing.

Which Way Around Should the Brick Slips and Panelling Go?

The short answer is that you can choose! Any way around works- horizontally, vertically, top, bottom, left or right.

The logical answer usually comes from the type of panelling you want.

Slatted - most often this is used next to the brick slips, the vertical lines of the slats give a greater impact going floor to ceiling, however they can be used horizontally themselves, and also to create smaller details where you have sections in a media wall for example.

Shaker/Victorian and Shiplap - The majority of the time this style is used horizontally, with the brick slips either above or below. In most cases, people usually think to panel the bottom half of a wall, meaning the top half is the brick slips. This way around is most logical in terms of the history of these finishes. You would normally already have a brick wall, and be installing the wooden feature on top of it so would work from the floor up.

How Do I Join the Panelling and Brick Slips?

With most wooden cladding, you'll be finishing with a capping or decorative edging, that allows for a nice transition.

The key things to consider are the thickness of the materials, and the size and material that physically joins them.

Brick slips are 22mm thick, and including the adhesive will come out to around 25mm. Therefore, you want your cladding, potentially, but certainly your edging to come out that far at the very least. Maintaining a look of full brickwork means the cladding would be on top of the bricks so if they can come out a little further, that will give the perfect impression.

You should get the course or edges of the brick slips as close as possible to the panelling. Due to the irregular shaping of the slips, particularly in the reclaimed collection, there will always be small gaps. Once everything is installed, you have a couple of choices- either use a very thin mortar line to cover these tiny gaps - keeping in style with the brickwork, or better, use a thin line of caulk that is either similar in colour to the cladding, paintable to that colour, or otherwise a nice contrasting colour to use it as a feature.

The ideal way to join the two materials would be to overlap them. If you can add part of the cladding edging infront of the last row or edges of the slips then it will give a perfect look of pre-existing brickwork.

What Colours Should I Put Together?

It depends on what style you're looking to achieve. Ultimately brick is an organic material, and as such the colourings go with most things.

You can look to blend in pastel colours with lighter blends, or give some contrast with deep browns or reds.

If you're creating two textures together, they can either blend, or contrast!

Can I Use Them Externally?

Bricks are made for outdoor use, so there is no issue in using brick slips externally. You will however, need to ensure the wood you use is treated for external use.

Where most often inside the panelling goes on top, externally it's usually the brickwork from the ground up. Historical designs include structural timber beams, and this can be used aesthetically to great effect, essentially boxing in areas of brickwork.