ᐅ Interior walls: drywall or masonry?

Chloe83 schrieb:

Hello everyone,

We are doing all the interior work in our house ourselves and are currently debating whether the interior walls should be entirely drywall or if it’s better to have them built as masonry.
Drywall would, of course, be cheaper and more flexible. However, we have concerns regarding a possible future resale.
The rest of the house will be solidly built with sand-lime brick.

I would be very grateful for any advice or opinions.

Have a great weekend!

This is how we will do it. Where we might want to make changes in the coming years, for example no walk-in closet but a larger living room, or an open kitchen instead of a semi-open one, we will use drywall. The rest will be built with masonry.

Chloe83 schrieb:

We are doing the entire interior fit-out of the house ourselves and are currently facing the question of whether the interior walls should be entirely drywall or if it would be better to have them built as masonry.

This sounds like an urgent question, but I recall you only recently asked about the general topic of shell construction / structural shell, so I assume this is more of a fundamental question still in the planning stage.

Chloe83 schrieb:

The house will otherwise be built solidly from sand-lime brick.

I don’t think that’s the case; as far as I know, sand-lime brick is currently only used with external wall insulation systems (EWIS).

Load-bearing walls of course cannot be drywall, and non-load-bearing walls can still provide bracing and therefore wouldn’t be drywall either. Is the house planned with regular straight upper floors or with sloped attic floors?
Basically, both options have a similar labor effort, but given the weight, I doubt a self-builder would use sand-lime bricks.

I think your question still needs much more background information.

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https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/

@11ant
We are just at the very beginning; planning is underway (I don’t have a plan yet, it’s mainly about various fundamental questions). The project involves a house with two full floors and a hip roof.
We would (or rather have to) subcontract the drywall work, while the general contractor would handle the masonry if we request it.
And yes, sorry, of course, calcium silicate bricks with external wall insulation system (EWIS).

Chloe83 schrieb:

We would (have to) subcontract the drywall work; the general contractor would handle the walls if we request it.

The insulation for warm roofs/cold roofs and the cladding for pitched ceilings and room ceilings is done by a drywall specialist, so they are already on site and can also build walls. Or is the general contractor so large that they do not allow any deviations?

Chloe83 schrieb:

(I don’t have a plan yet, this is mainly about some fundamental questions). It’s a house with two full floors and a hipped roof.

The exact floor plan and room dimensions are not the main issue here: the key difference is whether the interior walls meet the roof slopes. I interpret your description as a "townhouse," meaning the upper floor is a full vertical-wall story, with the roof pitch starting only at the attic level. With a hipped roof, there are most likely trusses — and again, the crucial point is whether there will be a concrete slab between the upper floor and the attic.

Chloe83 schrieb:

We would (have to) subcontract drywall, while the general contractor would handle masonry if we want.

I understand which trade—masonry or drywall—is involved. But have you also realized that some interior walls are load-bearing or at least provide structural bracing, and at those points, there is no choice but to build masonry walls?
I don’t think this question is really suitable for non-experts to decide: even where a choice exists, you likely don’t have the expertise to assess whether gypsum boards or drywall systems would be better. Also, I see you’d only have this choice for part of the walls: ideally, you might be able to decide this for about 25% of the walls on the ground floor and—assuming a timber ceiling structure there—about 50% of the walls on the upper floor. The rest are dictated by structural requirements, and there’s no room for discussion.

For attic spaces with sloped roofs, the answer would be simpler: forget about building masonry walls parallel to the gables. Professionals avoid that for good reasons whenever possible.
And, as mentioned, you probably won’t want to use sand-lime brick for weight reasons; you’d rather switch to aerated concrete (for the relevant interior walls).

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https://www.instagram.com/11antgmxde/
https://www.linkedin.com/company/bauen-jetzt/

Let me put it differently: Having all walls built with masonry is definitely possible, although it might be more complex due to structural requirements. However, using drywall for all walls won’t work unless you provide some kind of support instead. With two general contractors we negotiated with, having everything made from masonry (calcium silicate bricks) would have been possible for a small additional cost, but in that case, we didn’t see any added value compared to a properly executed (double-layered) drywall partition.