The addition of residues into clay matrix has been widely reported and reviewed during last decade. The heterogeneity of wastes and the lack of detailed information make difficult to provide an overall framework for comparing results. With the aim of showing an acceptable estimation of fired clay bricks properties, when wastes are added, this paper summarizes raw materials characterization and methods of most cited papers. Despite mechanical, physical and thermal properties highly depend on several parameters when residues are classified and results are related to the relative variation of density, a good correlation, between different papers, is found. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.