If you grew up around double brick homes, you’ve probably decided somewhere along the way that brick means better. Solid. Safe. Built to last. So when a builder tells you your new home is timber frame, it can feel like you’re being handed the cheaper option and told not to worry about it.
You’re not. Stack the two side by side, and timber frame, built the way we build it, wins on almost everything that actually matters for a first home. Not because double brick is a bad choice. Because the belief that brick automatically means better hasn’t kept up with how either one performs today.
The real differences
A double brick wall is two skins of masonry built as a cavity wall, roughly 230mm thick. Ours is different: a 90mm timber frame with 100mm of EPS insulation fixed to the outside, a vapour barrier between the two, a texture coat over the top, and a batt inside the frame as well. That’s around 190mm all up, 40mm less wall for the same footprint, on every plan in the range. It comes back to you as real living space, exactly how much depends on your home’s shape, but it’s space you get to use, not space the wall takes from you.
Weight matters more than most buyers realise. Timber frame is lighter, which means less load through the slab and footings, and an easier run getting materials onto a tight block, the kind most first home buyer lots actually are. Double brick asks more of the site at every stage: heavier trucks, more manual handling, greater load through the footings.
It also builds faster and more predictably. A timber frame home goes up in a clear sequence, frame, roof, cladding, then lining, and gets weathertight sooner, so internal trades can start earlier. It’s a big part of why the HIA points to timber frame as the faster method generally, not just in how we build it. Brick runs a longer, more exposed path, brickwork, roof, then plastering and finishing trades, and every stage of it leans on weather and on a bricklaying trade that’s thinner on the ground in WA than carpentry is. Brick supply has narrowed too. Perth’s market now runs through one major supplier with a smaller range than it used to, adding cost and program pressure to a system that already carried plenty of both.
Then there’s what it’s like to actually live in. Picture walking in after a 40 degree day. A timber frame home sheds that heat fast, so it cools down with the evening. Double brick holds onto heat longer, which helps through the worst of the afternoon, but that same thermal mass can take longer to release once conditions change, working against you through winter instead. Every Select First home meets WA’s mandatory energy compliant standards.
