There has a been a growing trend with brick veneer buildings to have them rendered in cement rendering and then painted. This has become popular for a few reasons one of which is that there are a lot of houses that were built in the 60’s 70’ even the 80’s whose brick colour and texture is simply just not fashionable e anymore and no matter what you do with the painting of the surrounding trim there is no way you can actually make them look modern the colour and texture of the bricks just give it away.
So the only option you have is to render and pint the rendering in a modern colour. This also gives you the option to change the colour as the latest fashion changes and no doubt they will as they always do.
It is a great solution to a problem however rendering itself, is not infallible and eventually it too needs maintenance because no matter how good the rendering is it is always prone to cracking to some degree. Some cracks if they are very small they can be usually filled with a latex paint as most modern paints are. If the cracks are larger, they will need to be filled with a water soluble flexible gap filler.
However, if you do not treat the gap filler in a particular way then the filling will stand out even when the wall is painted. What you need to do is when you are ready to wipe off the excess filler that is filling the crack in the rendering then you should use a kitchen sourer. The reason for this is that you then have a better chance of matching the texture of the rendering thus concealing the crack.
If you have wiped off the excess filler and you are not entirely happy with the finish of the texture you got using the sourer then will the filler is still in a ‘cheese’ consistency then using a very course piece of sand paper simply press into the soft filler thus imprinting the texture of the sandpaper into the filler.
Allow the filler to dry, then paint the rendering as usual. That way the cracks will be concealed by matching the texture of the rendering.
If you are having the work done by a tradesman then make sure that you quiz the house painter on how he is going to fill the cracks in the rendering because you have seen rendering in the past that has been filled and painted and the cracks were still visible as cracks that have been filled.