How can I paint my brick red and give it a rustic look?

What an amazing looking space! Try starting here- http://www.ehow.com/how_7783713_make-brick-look-old-stained.html

I would love to see how it comes out!

www.hometalk.com/diy/living-room/fireplaces-mantels/fire-place-makeover-valspar-autumn-russet-4750266

Brick comes in so many tones of terra cotta; red/orange. As your base is white, I would use a 'color washes' (watered down paint) of red and orange, not solid paint coats. You could also get this effect with 'dry brush' but that is a more difficult technique to achieve. You can wire brush or sand the finish to blend out to the color effect you like.

I recently saw bricks painted white like you have then with a paint on roller, roll on a terracotta red gently over the top of the white leaving the cement lines white and mostly covering the brick surface with the terracotta paint. The finished result looks like old reused bricks. I loved the finished result.

Dry brushing several acrylic red, brown and terra cotta colors randomly over the clean rough brick will give you the desired look. Remember that paint will look different in large areas, than it does in small. Using the darkest first and adjusting the applications as you progress will be the easiest. If you desire an aged look, remember soot marks happen around the opening of the fireplace. I use many different applicators to work with acrylics. Brushes are the most common, but paper towels, sponges, feathers and rags also leave their own distinct look.

I think a grey dry brush effect would be good.

I think the hardest part about painting brick is having to do the grout lines after...make sure you tape off ALL the grout lines now so they stay white. I would choose three different colours of heat resistant paints in shades of terra cotta and use a square sponge to smoosh the paint on the wall making sure nothing is uniform, maybe even make the bricks darker towards the pipe and stove. Then, using a colour wash really thinned out I would dry brush dk brown or black over top in up and down and side to side motions to look like the lines in cut brick. When that is all dry, peel off the tape covering the grout and thin out the black or brown you used for the dry brushing even more and go over the whole wall once more...make sure you keep the first layer of dry brush very light since you will be doing two layers. This will darken the grout and make it look older. I used this technique to do a faux stone wall in the bedroom of one of my friend's son's. Dragons and castles where his favourite!

I would hesitate about painting all that brick red because it will darken that area of the room. Have you thought about going with a lighter color?

I wonder if the brick you have is just underneath. If you took a wire brush you get at the home improvement store to a spot that's not noticeable and worked it back and forth to see if the paint came off to see what you have under the paint? If you found some nice brick that you could strip with some orange paint stripper you may be able to safely strip away the white to reveal a lovely old brick you want. Just a thought! Teresa

I would paint the grout a charcoal (natural grout color in my never to be humble opinion!) and do what Darline said above. Use a dry-ish rag/natural sponge for colors starting with darkest and progressing with minimal lighter colors.