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“White…is not a mere absence of colour; it is a shining and affirmative thing, as fierce as red, as definite as black.” G.K. Chesterton

 

A naked brick wall is a reminder of our urban self, a celebration of our having left the cave to interact with other people and build human things

And when we strip the plaster off the walls around us, exposing the colour and texture of bricks, we surround ourselves with far more than a city comfort

We feel part of history and accept its rugged, imperfect shaping of our lives.

A WHITE brick wall, however- such as the many models that are now one of Panespol’s® biggest selling ranges -provides us with surfaces that shed a fresh light on all things.

With white-painted brick, our view of all we need to contemplate – or to show off in a store for example – can now be influenced by an aesthetic that removes clutter and gives us a new beginning, a true virgin white were it not for the brick bumps we can still see and still palpate beneath the bright surface.

The white brick wall is just this, the perfectly imperfect background, one whose rough contours betray a history we have decided to come clean about. Honestly.

You don’t think so? Take a walk into an interior with white brick and compare it with an ambience dominated by truly flat white walls. The colour may be the same, but the texture beneath the painted brick works on the subconscious and brings a warmth to white that no other shapes can effect.

This is because bricks have been in the sightline of human beings since around 4000bc, way before the Romans starting making their bricks out of a nearly-white clay, and aeons before Panespol® figured out how to make perfect polyurethane imitations of real bricks in practical, light panels for so many different spaces and uses : shops, kitchens, bathrooms, home interiors, exteriors, window-dressing…

Though 20th century man undoubtedly brightened up work spaces and warehouses with a lick of lime and calcium carbonate, it wasn’t until the 1960s that a genuine aesthetic was established that saw white-painted brick used seriously and contagiously in interior design.

This was the perfect time for new beginnings. The austere hangover after a war people dared not forget but wanted out of sight made the white-painted wall a clear symbol for trend leaders, as the interiors in Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blow-Up perfectly illustrate.

By the 1990s, the white brick wall was back everywhere, though with generations for whom its symbolism of history was less significant than the eternal reminder of our gregariousness and urbanity that brick contours provide.

Besides the symbolism, which works on a psychological level, white brick’s more obvious quality is its functional harnessing of light, especially reflected natural light, meaning it brightens all spaces, especially small rooms and shops.

It may be white, but it is still a brick wall, and, as the renowned computer scientist Randy Pausch said:

 

“The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.”

 

And Panespol® was created to meet that desire, to provide you with all you need to decorate spaces  with decorative panel simply and quickly, to provide you with the backgrounds to creative design.

 

 

May we also remind you that you can paint over all Panespol® panels in any colour you choose, and then repaint as many times as you need to.

 

 

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