First-hand · one self-managed build
Brick, block or thermal block in Mexico: why I used different walls in the same house
When I built my own house in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, I didn’t pick one wall material and use it everywhere. I used brick, standard cement block, tabicón and a lightweight thermal block in different parts of the same house — because the right answer changed from wall to wall, with the sun, the shade, the weight and the budget. Most people ask it as a simple brick vs block question; in Mexico I found the better answer was to choose the material for each wall in turn. Here’s what each one cost, how each feels to live with, and where I’d use each again.
The short version
There’s no single best wall material here — there’s a best one for each wall. Standard cement block — the hollow concrete block that’s the default here — is the cheapest wall to build and a solid all-rounder. Brick costs the most per wall (it looks cheap per piece, but you lay far more of them) — its case is looks and comfort, not price. The lightweight thermal block I used is the priciest unit, and I put it on the walls that sit in shade all year. Tabicón sits in the middle.
If I had to give one rule: match the material to the wall’s exposure — thermal mass (block or brick) where the sun hits, lighter insulating block where it doesn’t — rather than buying one block for the whole house.
First, what I mean by “thermal block”
“Thermal block” is a slippery term — internationally it can mean AAC/aerated concrete (Hebel), fired-clay termoarcilla, or various lightweight blocks, and they don’t all behave the same. In this article it means the specific thing I was offered locally in Chiapas: a lightweight block made of pómez (pumice) — porous volcanic stone. That’s why it’s light and mildly insulating (less so than I thought it would be), and it’s not the same product as AAC, Hebel or termoarcilla. Treat everything below as my experience with the pómez block, not a verdict on every “thermal block” sold elsewhere.
From the actual build
The line-up
The four wall materials I used
All four are common in Chiapas, all four went into my house. Prices are 2026 pesos per unit — ✓ marks what I actually paid on my build — and note they run up to ~30% cheaper in the zones where the material is actually fabricated. Prices move; check them against a local materialista before you plan around them.
What each is, and what it cost
| Material | What it is | Each | Size | ≈ per m² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brick (tabique / ladrillo) | Fired clay; small, solid, traditional | ✓ MX$7 | 26×7 cm | ~45 |
| Tabicón | Solid cement brick, bigger than clay brick | ✓ MX$9 | 28×10 cm | ~30 |
| Hollow cement block | Standard hollow concrete block — the default here | ✓ MX$15 | ~40×20 cm | ~12 |
| Thermal block (pómez) | Lightweight pumice-stone block | ✓ MX$19 | ~40×20 cm | ~12 |
Those per-m² figures are approximate wall-face calculations from the units I had locally — not manufacturer specs. They assume a 1.5 cm mortar joint; a brick wall runs roughly 3¾ bricks across and 12 courses up per square metre. One more solid block worth knowing: a cement-filled block (a hollow block filled with concrete) behaves much like tabicón in everything below.
Cost
Brick vs block cost: the cheapest unit makes the most expensive wall
Brick is the cheapest piece on the list and the dearest wall to build — that surprised me, and it’s the single most useful thing on this page.
Look at the per-unit prices and brick (MX$7) looks like the bargain. But you don’t buy a wall by the piece — you buy it by the square metre, and that’s where it flips. A square metre of wall takes about 45 bricks but only ~12 blocks. So even though each brick is half the price of a block, you’re laying nearly four times as many of them — and every one of those extra pieces needs mortar around it and a mason’s time to place it.
On my build that meant brick walls came out clearly the most expensive: more units, much more cement and sand for all the extra joints, and walling labour that worked out close to double. Standard cement block was the cheapest wall to build, precisely because each piece covers the most and you lay the fewest. Tabicón sits in between. The lightweight thermal block is the priciest unit (MX$19) and covers the same area as a block, so it’s the most expensive of the “big block” options — you’re paying for the pumice, not for coverage.
What doesn’t change with your choice
The reinforced-concrete skeleton — the castillos (columns) and cadenas (ties) — is identical whatever you fill the walls with. That’s what stops a brick house from simply costing several times a block one: you’re only paying the difference on the walling units, mortar and labour, not on the structure.
A reminder on the numbers: these are my 2026 Chiapas unit prices, and brick and thermal block in particular run up to about 30% cheaper near where they’re fabricated. When you compare quotes, ask where each material is actually made, not just the price per piece — a cheaper block loses its edge if it has to travel far, arrives broken, or is hard for your mason to resource. Treat them as a structure to compare with your own local quotes, not a national price list. The full build budget these came from is in the cost to build a house in Mexico breakdown.
Comfort
Brick, block and thermal block: how each one feels to live with
This is the part you can’t get from a spec sheet, and the reason I didn’t just build the cheapest wall everywhere. I have all four materials on adjacent walls of the same house, in the same climate — so this is a like-for-like comparison of how they feel through a warm Chiapas day and a cold night.
Warm day vs cold night
| Material | Warm day | Cold night |
|---|---|---|
| Brick | Warms and cools gradually; evens out the day. | Holds a little warmth; the kindest to the touch of the four. |
| Hollow cement block | A touch cooler than brick. | Cools very quickly. Very cold by morning. |
| Tabicón | Warms up in direct sun; very cold in shade. Even in sun, cooler than brick. | Icy to the touch — but if it caught the day’s sun, it holds that warmth into the evening better than hollow block. |
| Thermal block (pómez) | Warms up only a little. | Surprisingly similar to hollow block. |
The headline is that brick simply feels better to live with — cement block is noticeably cold to the touch, while brick absorbs and releases heat gently and takes the edges off both hot afternoons and cold mornings. That comfort, not cost, is the real reason to choose brick.
The thermal block surprised me — and not the way I expected
I’d assumed the pómez “thermal” block would feel noticeably warmer on a cold night. It doesn’t — those walls feel much like the hollow-block ones. Its job isn’t to store warmth (it’s light and low-mass) but to slow heat moving through the wall. So it earns its place on walls where you’re trying to stop warmth leaking out, not where you want a wall to soak up the day’s sun and radiate it back. Honest verdict: useful, but a quieter benefit than the name suggests.
Weight
Weight, structure and an earthquake zone
As a rough rule on my build, the heavier units felt more substantial — but they also put more weight into the structure holding them up.
A rough rule that helped me: heavier units (block, tabicón, brick) have more load-bearing capacity, but they also need a stronger structure to hold them up, which matters most on upper floors. The pómez thermal block is the odd one out here — it’s much lighter than cement block because it’s pumice. Living in an earthquake zone, I found it genuinely reassuring to have the lighter block high up in the house: less mass overhead is less to move in a quake. If I were choosing again, I’d be quicker to spend on the lightweight pómez block high up — where the weight saving counts most — than on a sunny ground-floor wall, where the mass of block or brick is actually useful.
Load-bearing capacity and structural design differ between these materials and with your own layout — this is my lived experience, not engineering advice. Confirm anything structural, especially on upper floors or a slope, with someone qualified for your build.
Finish
Render, exposed brick, and a cost you can claw back
Most walls here get a cement render (aplanado) inside and out, and it’s one of the bigger line items late in the build. That’s where brick claws back some of its extra cost: brick doesn’t have to be rendered if you like the look of exposed brick, so a brick wall can be both the finish and the structure at once. I’ve used it that way as an interior feature — practical and good-looking, and you skip a whole render bill on that wall.
The render choice: lime mix or pure cement?
On the exterior you have a budget choice. A pure sand-and-cement render (no lime) is more water-resistant and needs no paint, which saves you both paint and the labour of painting — but it’s far more prone to cracking, and it doesn’t let the wall breathe. A 50% lime mix breathes and cracks less, which matters through San Cristóbal’s humid rainy season, when a wall that can’t breathe is more prone to trapping damp — but it does need painting.
And if you go with lime, there’s no rush on the paint: it can go on long after the render. Leave that decision — the cost, and choosing the perfect colour — for when the budget allows.
The decision
Which wall gets which material
This is the whole point of the page: I matched the material to what each wall had to do. Here’s the logic I used, and would use again.
Before you choose, ask of each wall
- Does this wall get direct sun, or is it in shade all year?
- Is it upstairs or carrying extra weight?
- Will it be rendered, painted, or left exposed?
- Is it a bedroom or living room where a cold wall matters?
- Is the material fabricated nearby, or trucked in from another zone?
Sun-exposed walls
Thermal mass — block or brick
Walls that catch the sun want mass that can soak up the day’s heat and release it through the cold San Cristóbal evenings. Standard cement block does this; brick does it and feels nicer.
Year-round shade
Lightweight thermal (pómez)
Walls that never get sun aren’t going to store heat anyway, so the job is to slow heat escaping. That’s where the lighter pómez block earns its place — and its low weight is a bonus upstairs.
Walls you’ll see and feel
Brick
Where comfort and looks matter — a room you live in, a feature wall — brick’s gentle warmth and the option to leave it exposed (no render) make it worth the higher walling cost.
For everything else — the bulk of a normal house — standard cement block is the sensible default: cheapest to build, quick, and a perfectly good wall. I treated the other three as deliberate choices for specific walls, not as a whole-house material.
Decide this before the plumbing and wiring go in
Choosing materials wall by wall isn’t only about looks — it affects what you order, what gets rendered or left exposed, and where the plumbing and electrical chases can run. Settle the wall plan before those routes go in, not after. More on that in managing your own house build.
In hindsight
What I’d do differently
Two things. First, I’d plan the wall materials room by room from the start — sun exposure, shade, and which rooms actually need to stay warm — instead of deciding wall by wall as the build reached each one. The thinking is the same; doing it up front would have been cheaper to order and simpler to manage.
Second, my bedroom is built from hollow cement block and it’s freezing in winter. The fix I have planned isn’t to rebuild it — it’s to add external insulation to the outside of that wall, which slows the heat loss without losing the wall’s mass. If a room has to be warm and it’s already block, insulating the outside is usually easier than changing the wall.
Questions
Common questions
Is brick or block cheaper for building a house in Mexico?
Standard cement block is cheaper to build a wall with, even though a single brick costs less than a block. You lay about 45 bricks per square metre versus ~12 blocks, so brick means far more units, far more mortar, and roughly double the walling labour. On my Chiapas build brick was clearly the more expensive wall — its advantage is comfort and looks, not cost.
What is a “thermal block” (block térmico) in Mexico?
The one I used is a lightweight block made of pómez — pumice, a porous volcanic stone — which makes it light and mildly insulating. Be careful with the term: “thermal block” elsewhere can mean AAC/aerated concrete (Hebel) or fired-clay termoarcilla, which behave differently. Ask exactly what a supplier means by it locally.
What’s the difference between tabicón and a hollow block?
Tabicón is a solid cement brick (about 28×10 cm); a hollow block is the bigger, hollow concrete unit (about 40×20 cm) that’s the default here. The block covers more wall per piece, so it’s quicker and cheaper to build with; tabicón is smaller and denser. In how it feels day-to-night, tabicón behaves much like a cement-filled block.
Which wall material is best for a cold climate?
It depends on the wall. For walls that get sun, thermal mass — cement block or brick — soaks up daytime heat and releases it at night, which helped in the cold San Cristóbal winters. For walls in permanent shade, a lighter insulating block (the pómez “thermal” block) slows heat escaping. Brick feels the warmest to the touch of the four. There isn’t one “warmest” material — there’s a best one per wall.
Do I have to use the same block for the whole house?
No — and I didn’t. I used brick, cement block, tabicón and pómez thermal block in different parts of one house, matched to each wall’s sun and shade. Standard cement block is the sensible default for most of a house; the others are worth choosing deliberately for specific walls.
Is thermal block worth it?
In my experience, on the right wall. The pómez block didn’t make cold nights noticeably warmer — its benefit is slowing heat loss, not storing warmth — so it earns its place on shaded walls and high up, where its light weight also helps in an earthquake zone. I wouldn’t pay the premium to use it across a whole house.
Is tabicón the same as brick?
No. In local use, brick (also tabique or ladrillo) is the small fired-clay unit; tabicón is a larger, solid cement brick. They look related but they’re different materials, and they cost and behave differently — as the tables above show.
Is the pómez thermal block the same as Hebel or AAC?
No. The block I used is made of pómez — pumice, a porous volcanic stone. AAC / aerated concrete (sold under names like Hebel) and fired-clay termoarcilla are different products that perform differently. If a supplier offers a “thermal block,” ask exactly what it’s made of before comparing it to anything here.
Written by Luke Burchell
I built and managed my own house in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, using four different wall materials on the same house. The prices and the comfort comparisons here are from that build — what each one cost me, how each feels to live with, and where I’d use each again.