Reverse brick veneer vs double brick vs timber frame

When you build a custom home in Perth, one of the first structural decisions is what your external walls are made of. The three realistic options are double brick, a lightweight timber or steel frame, and reverse brick veneer. They look similar once the house is finished, but they behave very differently in our climate, and the choice has a lasting effect on comfort and running costs.

This article compares the three on the things that actually matter, so you can see why we build most of our homes in reverse brick veneer and where the other two still make sense.

The three ways to build a wall in Perth

Double brick

The Perth default. Two skins of brick with a cavity between them, and no continuous insulation in a traditional build. The mass of the brick sits on the outside of the house, facing the sun. It is familiar, robust and locally understood, which is why it dominates. Its weakness is thermal: with the brick outside, the wall absorbs the day's heat and slowly radiates it inward through the evening, which is exactly when you want the house to cool down. We explain this in detail in why double brick struggles in Perth.

Timber or steel frame

A lightweight framed wall, insulated between the studs, and clad on the outside with brick veneer, fibre cement, render or weatherboard. Common on the east coast and increasingly used here. It is quick to build, well insulated and cost-effective, and it responds fast to heating and cooling. The trade-off is the flip side of that speed: with little thermal mass, the interior can heat up and cool down quickly, so temperatures swing more and the home leans harder on active heating and cooling to stay steady.

Reverse brick veneer

The insulation goes on the outside and a single skin of brick moves to the inside, within the insulated envelope. You get the best of both: continuous insulation keeping the weather out, and thermal mass on the inside steadying the temperature of the rooms you live in. This is the method behind most of our homes, and we cover how it is built in how reverse brick veneer works.

How they compare

The table below is a directional summary for a Perth climate. Every real project depends on orientation, glazing, insulation levels and detailing, but the pattern holds.

	Double brick	Timber or steel frame	Reverse brick veneer
Insulation	Little or none in a traditional build	Good, between the studs	Good, continuous, on the outside
Thermal mass	High, but on the outside	Low	High, and on the inside where it helps
Summer comfort	Poor, stores and releases heat at night	Moderate, swings quickly	Strong, stays cool and steady
Reliance on air conditioning	High	Moderate to high	Low
Typical NatHERS result	Around the 7 star minimum	Good with careful design	Comfortably 9 to 10 stars
Relative build cost	Baseline	Similar to lower	Modestly higher

What this means in Perth's climate

Perth gives us hot, dry summers with long spells above 35 degrees, and nights that cool down noticeably. The best wall for that climate is one that keeps the heat out during the day and uses the cool night air to reset. That calls for two things working together: insulation on the outside to block the heat, and thermal mass on the inside to hold a steady temperature.

Double brick has the mass but puts it in the wrong place, outside the insulation line, so it works against you in summer. A framed wall gets the insulation right but has little mass, so it holds temperature less well and swings with the weather. Reverse brick veneer is the one arrangement that puts both in the right place, which is why it performs so strongly here and pairs so naturally with passive solar design.

So which should you choose?

For most people building a comfortable, low-running-cost home in Perth, reverse brick veneer is our recommendation. It reaches 9 to 10 star comfort, keeps the air conditioner as a backup rather than a necessity, and does it for a modest premium over a custom-designed and built 7 star home, repaid over time in lower bills. For comparison, a full Passiv Haus commonly costs a further 20 to 35 per cent again on top of a comparable passive solar home depending on design complexity, which is a bigger step than most Perth homes need.

Timber or steel frame still has a place, particularly where speed, a tight budget or a difficult site favour a lightweight build, and it can perform well with careful design and good glazing. Double brick remains a reasonable choice if a client specifically wants it, but on thermal performance alone it is the weakest of the three for our climate. We walk through the full price picture in our guide to what an energy-efficient home costs in Perth.

You can read our overview of reverse brick veneer, understand how the wall is built, or get in touch to talk through your project.