Avoid Laying Your Bricks Horizontally For A More Pleasing Path

The humble brick can be an attractive and creative way to create a garden path. New bricks can give a clean, modern, industrial look, particularly if you choose gray. Old bricks offer a rustic appeal for traditional gardens. It's also possible to reuse broken bricks to create a beautiful backyard path. However, using whole bricks is the usual approach, and here's where pattern can have as big an impact as color.

A horizontal pattern is relatively easy to lay, but while it can give the impression of greater width, it tends to foreshorten the view. So, you can avoid laying your bricks horizontally for a more pleasing path. Having the bricks run vertically can make the path appear longer, and so the garden appears larger. It's something Sophie Gould, on Instagram as bramleyandbear, uses to great effect in a short but informative video. This design is customizable, and it would look equally good with other brick or paver patterns, too.

What we see in Sophie Gould's video is how a simple change from horizontal to vertical brick direction dramatically changes the appearance. In this case, a winding path has been laid out with a brickwork border. This results in a gently meandering path that draws the eye and invites you to travel along it to a cozy seating area at the end. The edges of the brick path have been softened with planting.

The path shown is quite narrow, and the bricks have been laid in a pattern known as a "running bond," which is what you usually find in brick walls. In addition to being more pleasing visually, running them vertically reduces the number of bricks that would have needed to be trimmed if they had run horizontally. It will likely save you a lot of time, too. It's a fine example of how a simple brick pattern can be just as effective as something more complicated. There's also a genius DIY way to add greenery to a brick or stone pathway like this, and you might want to investigate herringbone, basketweave, Spanish bond, and other attractive brick patterns. They can work particularly well if you were considering installing a brick patio in your backyard by coordinating the appearance of both elements.