Most shelving is, functionally, a way of covering a wall. On brick, that is the wrong thing to do to the best surface in the room.
People do not end up with exposed brick or cast concrete by accident. Somebody intended for it to be that way, or stripped the plaster off, or the building was converted and the decision was made to leave the structure showing. It is usually the most expensive-looking surface in the room and the only one with any history in it.
Then the shelving arrives, and almost every option on the market is — in its effect on the room, whatever its intent — an instrument for hiding walls. A bookcase has a back panel. A cabinet run has a carcass. Even open shelving frequently ships with a backing board, because a backing board makes the object read as furniture.
We would rather the wall won.
1. There is nothing behind the shelves
The system is three parts: a rail, vertical standards, and shelves that hook into them. There is no back, no carcass, no side panels and no plinth. On a brick wall, that means the brick runs behind the contents, uninterrupted, from floor to ceiling.
This matters more when the shelves are full than when they are empty, which is the opposite of how shelving is usually photographed. A loaded shelf covers its own depth of wall and no more. Between the shelves — which is most of the wall's area — the brick or the concrete is simply still there, with the light on it, doing what you kept it for.
In a converted building this is not decoration. The structure is the finish — the tectonic fabric of the building doing both jobs at once, which is the whole reason the conversion was worth doing. Covering it with a back panel and then hanging objects on the panel is, when you put it plainly, undoing the conversion at the scale of one wall.
This is why we design against a back. It costs us the thing a back panel gives a maker for free — a rigid box that hides every alignment error inside itself — and it is not negotiable on a wall like this.
2. The wall decides the fixing, and the fixing is the easy part
Brick, block and poured concrete hold shelving comfortably. There is no framing to find and nothing to miss, so every inch of the Hangtrack's 1 in hole pitch is a fixing position — spacing becomes a decision about the load rather than a hunt for a stud. A solid wall is the easy case for a hanging system, not the hard one.
Two things about which fixing, and then we will stop, because we are not the right people to specify it.
The substrate is not one material. Sound modern brick, soft old brick, hollow block, a wall that is brick in front of something else, and poured concrete all take different anchors with different published values. Those values exist — anchor manufacturers publish pull-out and shear figures per substrate, and that is the number to design to. We publish the gauge of our steel because we bought it and loaded it; we have never seen your wall.
Mortar joint or brick face is a real trade, not a detail. A fixing in the joint is repairable, because repointing is ordinary maintenance. A fixing in the face of a brick is frequently the stronger one and leaves damage that is there for good. Which you want depends on the load and on how permanent you intend this to be — and that is genuinely a decision, not an oversight in the instructions.
3. How many holes, and where they end up
Here is the argument that is specific to masonry, and it is about taking the shelving down rather than putting it up.
The Hangtrack is the only part fixed to the wall. It takes one row of fixings at one height, and everything after it hooks on: standards slide along the track and shelves lock into the standards. Move the whole layout and the wall is untouched.
The alternative pattern — standards screwed directly to the wall — puts a column of fixings down the full height of every standard. On a four-bay wall that is five columns of holes, spread across the face of the brick, at every height including eye level.
On painted drywall the difference is filler and an afternoon. On brick it is permanent. Nobody patches a brick face invisibly: a plugged hole is a slightly different colour and a slightly different texture for as long as the wall is standing, and there will be forty of them at the height you look at.
So on masonry the question is not only will it hold but what does this wall look like in ten years if the shelving goes. One line of fixings, high, in a row, is a very different answer from a grid of them at eye level. It is the same argument for a landlord, a leaseholder and anyone who suspects they will rearrange the room eventually — which, in our experience, is everyone.
What this costs
No back panel means no hiding. A carcass conceals a multitude of small misalignments inside itself. An open system has nowhere to put them, which is a demand on the parts and on the person installing the track — the line you put on the wall is the line everything else inherits.
Masonry is more work to drill than it is to hold. A hammer drill, dust, the right anchors, and time proportional to the length of the run. The holding is trivial; the drilling is the afternoon.
And a brick wall is rarely flat or plumb. Old brick undulates, and cast concrete has whatever the formwork gave it. A hung system absorbs that at the track rather than at every column — the gap behind the shelving varies instead of the shelf line — but it does not make a bowed wall straight, and nothing does.
We would also say plainly that this is not the cheap way to put shelves on brick. Two brackets and a plank into masonry will hold books. What you are buying here is a wall that can be re-drawn without drilling brick a second time.
If your wall is the thing you like about the room
- Look at the wall with the shelves full, not empty. The question is how much brick is left visible between loaded shelves — which is a spacing decision, and mostly a matter of how far apart you set the shelves.
- Decide about the back before anything else. If the shelving has a back panel, everything else about this post is moot.
- Count the holes, and where they sit. Ask any system how many fixings go into the wall and at what heights. On masonry that is the permanent part of the purchase.
- Joint or face — choose deliberately. Repairable against stronger. Both are defensible; drifting into one by accident is not.
- Leave the deep shelves low. Depths of 8, 12 and 16 in mix on one wall, and keeping the shallow ones high leaves more of the wall in view at the height you actually see it.
The parts this post describes: the Hangtrack — $35 for 24 in, $39 for 36 in, twelve gauge, drilled every inch, and the only part that touches your wall; the Shelf Standards at $49 that hook onto it; and the Shelves from $84.99 in three depths. No back panel is made for any of them, and that is deliberate. Desh Home is in Atlanta.
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