Custom Mortar Colors With Concrete Pigment

Mortar is usually gray — or white, or buff — and it is usually the wrong color for the brick it is holding together. Coloring it costs pennies and is the difference between brickwork that looks new and brickwork that looks like it has always been there.

Mortar colored with Merlot concrete pigment.

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Why bother

Standard mortar frequently clashes with the design it serves. Bright white mortar against dark red brick reads as new and slightly harsh; the same joint colored to a soft heather or ash reads as worn and settled. It is a small change with a disproportionate effect, and on a repair it is what makes new work disappear into old.

Merlot and tan mortar, both colored with concrete pigment.

Mixing

Dry first

Combine the pigment and mortar dry in the mixer before adding water — this is the single thing that determines whether the color comes out even

Calculate

Use the pigment calculator for your mix weight

Remember

Only the cement and lime take color, so you need their weight, not the bag weight

Sample

A pigment sampler against your actual mortar before you point a wall

Popular mortar colors

From the gray-based chart, the four that come up most often are Merlot, Wheat Buff, Smokestack and Brick Red. All of them can be diluted for a subtler accent rather than a full color change — worth doing on a repair, where the aim is to disappear rather than to stand out.

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What's Next

1. Grout too → Color Your Grout with Concrete Pigment
2. Save on exterior paint → Stucco Colors
3. The fundamentals → Integral Color Concrete
4. Applying stain outdoors → How to Apply Outdoor Concrete Stain
5. Choosing a sealer → The Best Concrete Sealer
6. Prefer a reactive, mottled look? → Acid Stain Colors Guide
7. Shop → EverStain™ Kits · Trial Kits

Direct Colors. Shawnee, OK. Manufacturing the full decorative concrete system since 1997.