Brick Slips Setting-Out Guide: How to Plan a Wall Before Installation

Good brick slips can still look wrong if the wall has been badly set out. A narrow cut beside a doorway, a joint that drifts out of level or a patch of similar colours grouped together can make an otherwise careful installation feel improvised.

That is why the most useful work often happens before any adhesive is mixed. Setting out is the stage where you decide how the courses will sit, where the joints will land, how the corners will turn and which areas deserve full slips rather than awkward fragments. Whether you call them brick slips, brick tiles, brick effect tiles, brick cladding or brick veneer, the same principle applies: the finished wall should look planned from the first course to the last.

This guide focuses on that planning stage. It is not another general installation tutorial. It is a practical way to think through the wall so you can spot visual problems while they are still pencil marks rather than fixed brickwork.

Why setting out matters more than most people expect

A brick slip wall is read by the eye as a pattern. Even when the slips themselves have rustic edges, tonal variation or an intentionally aged finish, the overall arrangement still needs rhythm. Horizontal courses should feel controlled. Vertical joints should repeat with purpose. Corners should look believable. Cut pieces should appear to belong where they have been placed.

The difficulty is that a wall rarely gives you a perfect blank rectangle. Real rooms have skirting lines, sockets, radiators, window reveals, door linings, chimney breasts, shelving, worktops and changes in ceiling height. If you simply begin at one edge and work across, those fixed features decide the layout for you. The result can be a thin sliver of brick at the most visible point in the room.

Setting out reverses that process. You make the visible finish the priority, then work backwards into the measurements.

1. Measure the visible brick field, not just the plastered wall

Start by deciding exactly where the brick finish begins and ends. This sounds obvious, but the visible field is not always the same as the overall wall dimension.

For example, a kitchen wall might disappear behind tall units at one end and finish against a window reveal at the other. A chimney breast may have two returns that need corner pieces. A living room feature wall may stop behind a fitted cabinet. Measure the area that will actually be seen once the room is complete.

Mark all interruptions on a simple sketch:

• outside corners and returns;
• internal corners;
• doors and windows;
• sockets, switches and wall lights;
• worktops, shelves and fitted furniture;
• fireplace openings or other fixed features;
• the final floor and ceiling lines.

This gives you an elevation to plan rather than a bare dimension to cover.

2. Choose the joint width before you calculate anything else

The face size of a brick slip is only part of the module. The joint is part of the pattern too. If you change the joint width halfway through the planning process, every course and vertical joint moves with it.

Decide the intended spacing first, then treat one slip plus one joint as the repeating unit for your calculations. If you are unsure what spacing system suits your chosen slips, our guide to brick slip spacer size gives useful context, but always follow the requirements of the products and system you are actually using.

The key point is consistency. A wall with deliberately generous joints can look excellent. A wall with deliberately tight joints can also work in the right setting. What tends to look wrong is a wall where the joint width slowly changes because the installer is trying to make the final course fit.

3. Do not assume the best starting point is the left-hand edge

There is no rule saying the first full brick slip must begin at the left side of the wall. In many rooms, that is the least useful place to start planning.

Ask which part of the wall the eye will notice first. It might be the centreline of a chimney breast, the edge of a doorway, the return beside a kitchen unit or the exposed corner of a feature wall. Those points deserve the cleanest geometry.

On a symmetrical chimney breast, centring the bond can make sense. On a wall with one highly visible outside corner, working the layout from that corner may give a more convincing result. On a long wall broken by a doorway, it can be better to balance the cuts either side of the opening than to accept a full slip at one extreme and a narrow fragment at the other.

The best setting-out point is therefore the point that controls the appearance of the finished wall, not simply the easiest place to put the first piece.

4. Build a dry control course before you mark the wall

Lay a row of slips on the floor, a workbench or another flat surface with the planned spacers between them. This gives you a physical control course.

A dry course is useful because real products are easier to understand than calculations on paper. You can see how the joint width reads, how the texture changes from one slip to the next and how a half-bond would actually line up.

Use the control course to test the wall dimension. Move it conceptually across your sketch and see where the cuts land. If the final piece would be excessively narrow, adjust the starting position before any adhesive is involved.

This is also the right moment to decide whether the wall wants a conventional stretcher-style bond, a more regular stack, or another layout that suits the room. The pattern should be chosen before the first datum line is drawn.

5. Set a datum line that belongs to the room, not the floor

Floors and ceilings are not always perfectly level, particularly in older British properties. If you follow a floor that rises gradually across the room, the brick courses can make that slope more obvious.

Instead, establish a true level datum with an appropriate level or laser and use that as the reference for the courses. You can then plan how any small discrepancy is absorbed at the top or bottom of the wall.

This matters especially where brick slips meet kitchen worktops, mantels, shelves or other strong horizontal lines. Two lines that are almost parallel are often more noticeable than two lines that are deliberately independent.

A clean datum gives the entire elevation something reliable to follow.

6. Plan the bond around openings before you plan the easy sections

Doorways, windows and sockets are where an unplanned brick slip layout usually reveals itself.

Rather than treating openings as obstacles you will deal with later, plot them on the elevation at the beginning. Work out where the horizontal courses meet the head and sill. Check whether vertical joints are likely to fall directly against an edge. Look for places where you could end up with a tiny L-shaped cut around a socket or a narrow strip beside a door lining.

Small changes to the starting position can often remove several awkward cuts at once.

When cuts are unavoidable, make them look intentional. A well-proportioned cut brick beside an opening can look completely natural. A collection of narrow fragments usually looks as though the layout was allowed to run out of space.

For the practical cutting stage, see our separate guide on how to cut brick slips.

7. Treat colour distribution as part of setting out

With highly uniform brick tiles, the main setting-out challenge is geometry. With red brick slips and rustic brick slips, colour and texture become part of the layout as well.

Do not open one box, fix every slip from it, then move to the next. If the product contains natural or manufactured variation, that approach can create visible patches. Open several boxes and pull from them in rotation so the wall reads as one blended surface.

This is particularly useful with products that have deliberately varied tones. For example, our Old Coach House Red Brick Slips combine strong red tones, while Rustic Farmhouse Brick Slips introduce warmer brown shades over a red base. The Maryland Country Red Brick Slips give another red-led option with their own visual character.

The point is not to create a rigid colour formula. It is to prevent accidental clusters. Before fixing, look at the next several pieces together. If three particularly dark or distinctive slips are about to sit side by side, move one elsewhere in the wall.

8. Outside corners should control the adjacent straight runs

An exposed outside corner is one of the places where brick cladding either looks convincing or looks obviously applied. Purpose-made corner slips help the face continue around the return, but they also affect the setting out of both connected elevations.

Plan the corner and the two walls together. Do not set out the main face perfectly and leave the return as an afterthought. A change of only a small amount on the front elevation may produce a much cleaner arrangement around the side.

This is especially important on chimney breasts, columns, piers and short returns where nearly every cut is visible.

9. Count the wall after the layout has been refined

Material quantity is normally calculated from area, but the setting-out plan tells you where extra cutting and wastage are likely to occur. A simple rectangular wall with generous full-slip runs is different from a wall with four returns, multiple sockets and several narrow reveals.

Once you have a credible layout, compare it with your material estimate and make a sensible allowance for cuts, breakages and selection. Our article on how many boxes of brick slips to order explains the quantity side in more detail.

The important sequencing is this: measure, plan, refine, then finalise the order. Ordering first and working out the cuts later can leave you short at the point where matching material matters most.

10. Plan the supporting materials at the same time

A setting-out drawing should not only show where the brick effect tiles will sit. It should also remind you what the wall needs before the slips go on and what will finish the joints afterwards.

Substrate preparation depends on the wall and the chosen system. Where a suitable primer is required, use a product compatible with the background and adhesive. Our Brick Slip Primer & PVA is one of the preparation products in our range, but the correct specification must always match the substrate and installation method.

Likewise, allow for the pointing stage rather than treating it as a separate job at the end. We stock Natural Brick Slip Mortar for pointing applications. Joint colour changes the overall reading of red brick slips, rustic brick slips and lighter brick tiles, so it is worth choosing it while you are still planning the visual result.

A simple way to test a layout before committing

When the elevation is sketched, the joint width is chosen and the control course is laid out, step away from the numbers for a moment and ask five visual questions:

• Are there any very narrow cuts on the most visible edges?
• Do corners and returns look like part of the same brickwork rather than separate panels?
• Do strong horizontal features in the room relate cleanly to the brick courses?
• Are distinctive colours and textures spread naturally across the wall?
• Will sockets, openings and fitted furniture interrupt the bond in awkward places?

If one answer bothers you on paper, it will usually bother you more once the wall is finished. Adjusting a datum by a few millimetres or shifting a starting point before installation is easy. Correcting the same problem after the adhesive has cured is not.

Brick slips, brick tiles, brick effect tiles, brick cladding and brick veneer: the planning principle is the same

Homeowners search for this finish using several names. Brick slips and brick tiles are the terms most often used for individual thin brick-facing units, while brick cladding and brick veneer can describe the broader wall finish. Brick effect tiles is another phrase commonly used by people looking for the appearance of exposed brick without constructing a full masonry wall.

Whatever terminology brings you to the product, a believable result depends on more than the surface itself. The layout must respect the room. It must deal calmly with corners, openings and changes in level. It must make colour variation look natural rather than random.

That is why setting out deserves its own stage in the project rather than being squeezed into the first hour of installation.

Before the first brick tile touches adhesive

A well-set-out wall tends to look effortless because the difficult decisions have already been made. Full slips appear where the eye expects them. Cuts disappear into logical edges. Red brick slips and rustic brick slips are distributed rather than clustered. Corners turn naturally. Joints remain consistent because the installer is following a plan instead of correcting one course at a time.

If you are still choosing the finish itself, browse the full brick slips, brick tiles and brick cladding collection first, then plan the wall around the actual product you intend to use. The most convincing brick veneer effect starts long before pointing. It starts with a tape measure, a level, a few dry-laid slips and a layout that has been thought through properly.