Painting interior bricks

[Prestissimo]

We have a section of 'feature' bricks in our kitchen/dining room. I hate it, and although I can ignore it a lot of the time I recurrently feel the need to paint the bricks. They're dusty, hard to clean and, frankly, ugly.

Can anyone recommend how to paint over these? Do they need some sort of treatment first? I could ask our decorator but that will cost £££ and I'm wondering if I can do this myself.

TIA

I've done this with an ugly brick surround fireplace. Literally just painted over with the same paint that was going onto the walls. It took a few coats but was easy to do, and has been fine for years afterwards.

Also did it using ordinary white paint, took a couple of coats but has lasted a good few years.

Thanks both that's interesting. Thought it might need something to make the paint stick - only thing worse than these bricks would be them with peeling paint all over

Bring on a rainy weekend...!

I also did a brick arch way with regular emulsion and it was perfect for the 4 years that we lived there.
But masonry paint exists so you could always try a tin of that.

www.homebuilding.co.uk/advice/painting-a-brick-fireplace

I would use a primer like Zinsser first, especially if your chosen paint colour is paler than the bricks as you'll need less of that to cover the brick red.

You need a masonry paint. I painted our stone fireplace recently as it was discoloured and patchy. I used a white masonry paint, took quite a few coats but looks amazing and now easily wiped down.

I’d use Frenchic, it’s self priming and sticks like s* to a blanket. I use it a lot as it has really good coverage, dries quickly and doesn’t smell strongly.