How to Drill Into Brick and Hang a TV on a Brick Wall

A 65-inch TV weighs somewhere around 50 pounds, and in a Chicago brick building every one of those pounds ends up hanging on a few small holes. That’s why how to drill into brick comes down to where those holes land and what goes inside them, and the brick-or-mortar question gets its answer in the very next section.

Drill Into the Brick or the Mortar?

Put the TV anchors in the brick, since a solid brick grips about as hard as anything in an old house, and leave the mortar for patch-friendly jobs like a calendar hook.

The National Park Service guide to mortar joints has the reason, written for preservationists and handy for TV owners too, since historic mortar was meant to be softer than the brick and fail first, a sacrificial joint protecting the brick around it. A 1915 two-flat can still be held together with lime and sand, because portland cement, made in the US since 1872, didn’t catch on with masons until the early 1900s.

That’s the whole answer to the drill into mortar or brick question for a heavy screen, with one footnote about cracked bricks, which get skipped like a bad avocado. Bed joints and head joints can still carry a light frame.

What You Need for Drilling Into Brick

Brick laughs at a regular drill for the first ten minutes, so drilling into brick goes better with a hammer drill.

• Hammer drill, rented is fine.
• Carbide-tipped masonry bit.
• If possible, a depth stop.
• Painter’s tape for marking.
• Respirator before the first hole.

The anchor package prints the masonry drill bit diameter, so the anchors come home first and the bit second, a rule that saves one trip to the hardware store. A HEPA vacuum belongs in the cart too, as anyone who has watched red powder drift across a hardwood floor will confirm.

How to Drill Into Brick, Step by Step

1. Pencil marks go first.
2. Tape covers each mark.
3. Slow start, hammer off.
4. Then the hammer kicks in.
5. Vacuum every finished hole.

On a Saturday morning job the first hole takes the longest, because a masonry bit loves to skate across a smooth brick face until the tape gives it something to bite. A minute at low speed with the hammer off leaves a shallow dimple, and only then does the hammer come on, with the drill held square and backed out every few seconds so the dust can escape. By the time the bit hits the depth stop, set to the anchor’s embedment depth plus a hair, the hole is ready for the vacuum nozzle.

Going by the OSHA silica rule for drilling, a pro crew needs a shroud and a dust collector rated at 99% filtration on that drill, plus a HEPA vacuum for every hole. Your living room won’t get an OSHA visit, though the silica in brick dust behaves exactly the same at home.

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Anchors That Hold a TV in Brick

A hardware store aisle offers four anchors for masonry, and the wedge anchor is the one that wandered over from the concrete section.

Sleeve anchors for brick grip along their whole length as the nut tightens, which spreads the pull through the brick. Tapcon screws in brick cut their own threads in a pilot hole sized by the box, a neat trick that stops being neat if the hole runs oversize. Every load rating and embedment depth on this job comes from the anchor and mount paperwork, and we’d rather nobody guessed numbers for something hanging over a couch.

Mounting a TV on a Brick Wall

Mounting a TV on a brick wall starts on the couch, with a helper holding the screen at a few heights until the middle of the picture sits near eye level. Ten minutes of that beats years of a sore neck.

By the second coffee the mount’s paper template is taped up and the VESA pattern has been nudged until every bolt lands in a whole brick. Fixed and tilting mounts get by on four holes, while a full-motion arm wants more, because it levers on the wall every time somebody swings it toward the kitchen. The level gets one last look before the TV goes up, since a tilt found afterward means new holes in old brick.

How to hang a TV on a brick wall without a waterfall of cords is the last chapter. A surface raceway or a cable cover painted to match runs down to the power outlet, and the soundbar wire can ride in the same channel.

Exposed Brick or Plaster Over Brick? Chicago Walls

Behind the plaster in a classic 1910s-1930s Chicago bungalow sits solid brick, and the Historic Chicago Bungalow Association counts more than 80,000 of those houses, close to a third of the city’s single-family homes. Add CMAP’s 38.8% of housing built before 1940, and the odds that your wall is plaster over brick look pretty good.

A test hole settles it in a minute, since the dust coming off the bit turns from white to brick red right where the plaster ends. That depth tells you how much longer the anchor has to be, and furring strips behind the plaster can add a gap that swallows anchor length fast.

Light things get an easier ride. How to hang things on a brick wall like mirrors and frames is a concrete screw in a mortar joint, our shelf and picture hanging crew’s daily bread, and limewash for Chicago brick changes the color without disturbing a single anchor.

Brick Fireplaces and Chimney Breasts

A chimney breast can hide a live flue, and the drill bit has no idea where the flue starts. On a fireplace surround the holes go into mortar joints only, with the owner’s OK, because repointing a chimney costs more than any TV.

Mounting a TV on a brick fireplace brings heat and neck-angle questions that our TV mounting in Chicago page already covers. For a wall built around the screen, see our TV feature walls, and the bigger price picture lives in what a handyman costs in Chicago.