Mounting a TV on a Brick Wall

Part of our complete guide: How to Mount a TV on Any Wall.

Most of what gets written about brick assumes a fireplace. Plenty of the brick walls we mount on are nothing of the kind: an exposed brick wall in a converted downtown building, an interior brick partition in an older Lexington house, a brick wall in a finished basement, or the brick face of a wall in a 1950s ranch that somebody decided to leave bare.

Those are easier jobs than a chimney breast in two useful ways. There is no firebox below throwing heat at the screen, and no mantel pushing the television higher than anybody wants to look. What brick does bring is two questions worth settling before a drill comes out, and one piece of common advice that is backwards.

1. Solid Brick or Brick Veneer?

This is the question that decides the whole job, and it is worth two minutes. A solid brick wall is several courses of brick thick and is the structure itself. Brick veneer is a single skin of brick tied back to an ordinary wood or steel framed wall, with a deliberate gap behind it for drainage.

They look identical from the room. The tells are elsewhere:

• Jamb depth at a window or door. A solid wall is deep, so the reveal around an opening is unusually thick. A veneer wall reads closer to ordinary.
• Where the wall sits. An interior brick partition standing between two rooms is almost always solid. A brick face on an exterior wall line is more often a veneer.
• What the drill tells you. A test hole in an inconspicuous spot is honest: solid brick stays dense all the way, while a veneer goes through a single brick and then into air.

The answer changes what we fasten to. On solid brick the wall itself takes the load. On a veneer the brick is a facing rather than a structure, so modest loads are fine and a heavy set or a long full-motion arm is a reason to reach the framing behind it instead — which is the same thinking we apply to stone veneer walls.

2. The Anchor Goes in the Brick, Not the Mortar

This is the one that catches people, because a lot of advice online says the opposite. Drill the brick. The brick is the stronger of the two materials, and a mortar joint is there to seal and bed the wall, not to hold a bolt.

On an older wall there is a second reason. Joints are where a brick wall gets worked on — repointed, patched, filled where something used to be fixed — so the mortar you are looking at may be newer, softer and thinner than anything around it, and there is no way to tell by looking. The face of a brick is consistent in a way a joint is not.

Set properly into the face of a sound brick, a masonry anchor holds very well. The practical limit on the install stops being the wall and becomes the mount: its weight rating and whether its bolt pattern fits the back of your television.

3. Drilling It Without Wrecking the Face

Brick does not forgive a rushed hole the way drywall does, and a chipped face stays chipped. What the job actually takes:

• A hammer drill and a masonry bit sized for the anchor. An ordinary drill in an ordinary chuck will polish a hole in hard brick and go nowhere.
• Holes placed away from the brick edges. Near a joint the corner of a brick can break out. The middle of the face is where it is strongest.
• Clear of any crack. A hole in a cracked brick is in two pieces of brick, and it gets moved to a sound one.
• Dust blown out before the anchor goes in. A hole packed with brick dust stops an anchor seating properly, and an anchor that is not fully seated is the one that moves later.
• Level marked before anything is drilled. There is no sliding a plate sideways in brick to fix a mistake, which is a difference from drywall worth respecting.

The screws on the television side are a separate question, and the ones in the mount's box are not always right for a given set — our guide to what size screws a TV wall mount needs covers that half.

4. The Cables, With Nothing Inside the Wall

Here is the trade-off for all that strength. A solid brick wall has no cavity. There is no stud bay to drop a cable down and nothing to fish, so the in-wall route we use on framed walls is not what this wall is offering.

What works on brick is surface work done neatly, and it looks better than people expect. A paintable raceway run down the face takes paint the same as the wall does. Where the room allows it, a run tucked behind existing trim, into the baseboard, or along a corner is tidier still. If there is a framed wall or a chase anywhere nearby, that is often the best route of all and we will use it.

A brick veneer wall sometimes gives you the gap behind the brick, but it is a drainage space doing a job and it is not a cable chase. Tell us where the nearest outlet is when you book, or send a photo of the wall, and we will tell you what that spot takes before the day. The same options come up on any wall that cannot be opened up.

5. Where Not to Put It

Most of a sound brick wall is good. The places worth avoiding are specific:

• A crack, or a run of failed mortar. Both say the wall is moving or has moved, and neither is where a television goes.
• The first course at the floor, which is both too low to matter and the dampest part of an older wall.
• Brick around a flue or a bricked-up opening. An old vent or stove opening filled in later is rarely as solid as the wall around it.
• Anything that sounds hollow or loose when you tap it. A brick that has let go of its bed will not hold an anchor, however good the anchor is.

If any of that describes the spot you had in mind, there is usually a good answer a foot or two either side of it, and a corner install or a different wall in the same room is worth considering. Ask us about the wall when you book and we will tell you what it takes once we have looked at it.

What It Costs

Installation is priced by screen size: 32" to 55" is $129, 65" is $139, 75" is $229 and 85" and up is $279. That covers mounting the TV, leveling, basic cable management and all wall hardware, including the masonry anchors a brick wall needs. The mount is separate — flat $35, tilting $45, full-motion $125 for sets between 32" and 55", which is a special order rather than a same-day item — or we will fit one you already own at no mount charge.

Service is free within 20 miles of Lexington, and Richmond is our home base so it is free there too. Beyond that it is $35 to Frankfort, Paris and Harrodsburg, $45 to Danville and Berea, and $65 to Somerset, scheduled in advance rather than same-day. Add-ons are priced separately when you want them: soundbar mounting $40, smart TV setup $35, old TV removal $30 and powerline adapter setup $99.