So long as you use a ceramic or mineral based paint you should be fine painting the brick. It basically makes the maintanence that comes with painting brick disappear. The house looks a bit dark as is. I would paint, personally. It would help bring this 70s house up to date. Maybe an off white or gray to help it go with the roof. You can also get more creative with trim and shutter color this way.

Agree on shutters, no shutters. If they can't be architecturally correct or at least appear to close and angle properly, no shutters. We do virtual exterior designs and recently did a more classic take on that same style house. We added trim boards and beefed up molding on windows. I know you are leaning modern farmhouse, but thought I would share for fun because house is SO SIMILAR. We also added some brick to bottom of columns and a great stained, wood door. This classic look will never go out of style :). We gave the client two color options.

I addition to painting there are other things you can do to bring back some of the historic character of the buildings. Doors of an appropriate style will add more historic character. The commercial entrance on the blue building needs to be more of a feature. One way to do that is to paint the red door to the right of the entrance the same color as the siding so the eye is not drawn to that area. Kickplates could be added under the windows on building with the purple(ish) door. Since picture windows were on most commercial buildings adding them to these windows would return some of the character of a commercial space. Awnings could be added over some of the windows. See if you can find some historic photos of the buildings to see what was there previously. There might have been dentil molding or corbels on the cornice along the top of the blue building that could be recreated. Signage is another area that can aide in bringing more historic character to a building. Using overhanging signs is appropriate, and also, since the buildings are so close to the street allow people to know who and where a business is. You need to put together a list of things you want to do and then rank them in order of what has to be done, what you really want to do and finally what would be nice to do but is not a priority. If there is a local Historic Preservation/Planning Department they can be an valuable resource for you. Good luck.

Thank you all for your help. Yes cat_ky, the house has been ignored for 25-30+ years. I grew up in the house and just took it over -- I look forward to giving it new life. So Color Zen and cat_ky, would you do the entire house in the blue-green/grey combo or would you make the horizontal siding and garage door white (is that considered trim too)? And by minimizing the corbel, should I just paint it whatever the background color is? I definitely am planning on getting rid of the shutters! HU-187528210, I considered painting it all white, but I can't remove the stone and my neighbor next door has an all white house that is much nicer than mine. I am doing the inside in a bright white though! Thank you all again for the valuable feedback.