Ceiling Alterations

Considering the steady flow of new products entering the marketplace, there’s no indication the expansion of options is stopping anytime soon. To help navigate the sea of choices and identify the best ones to meet aesthetic, performance and budgetary goals for projects, metal ceiling manufacturers provide consultation and technical services.

Big Panels

Relative to coverage area, David Bailey, director of engineering, specialty ceilings at Malvern, Pa.-based CertainTeed Corp., says, “Size it up. Metal is an eye-catching ceiling material in its own right. Customize your look even more by leveling up in size and scale. Some manufacturers offer uniquely large-format metal panels, even as massive as 4 feet wide by 8 feet long, to achieve sprawling, monolithic looks that shine with appeal and demand attention.”

Similarly, Michael Corpolongo, head of product management at Rockfon in Chicago, says, “I think it’s tending toward the monolithic.” Instead of 2-foot square or 4-foot square panels, some projects have used 4-foot by 10-foot panels, he says. Others have utilized long plank panels, 2 feet wide by 6, 8 and 10 feet long.

One reason large panels are used is to maintain some of the look and feel of ceiling panels in smaller spaces in spaces with high ceilings, Corpolongo says. “It could be a really high ceiling space, but [designers] still want to have that feel of lines. But if you go to a small standard 2-foot by 2-foot and it’s a very high ceiling space, it kind of disappears. So they want to increase that size to get that same kind of a feel of creating lines in the ceiling.”

Folded Planes

In terms of ceiling planes, there are options to shape them into forms with depth instead of leaving them flat. Ceiling planes have been folded in a variety of ways for projects that have come through Armstrong Ceiling and Wall Solutions’ You Inspire Solutions Center in Lancaster, Pa., says Daniel Holdridge, manager of the center. “A trend that we’re seeing is where [designers] take ceiling planes and instead of just being a flat ceiling or sloped ceiling, they’re creating these triangular planes that come together. It just gives the space this really cool, modern feel to them.”

One way to create a folded ceiling plane without making the entire system custom is to use standard panels for the interior of a ceiling and custom trim pieces cut on-site for the perimeter, Holdridge says. “The panels are all the same, and they’re field cut. So there are different things like that that we can do and explain to designers up front.”

Perforations and Open Area

Another set of options for metal ceilings pertains to perforations and open area. One tip for using standard perforated metal ceiling tiles is, for patterns with a stagger, change the angle of the stagger so no matter which way the panels are installed, they match the pattern of the ceiling, says William Farber Jr., vice president of sales and operations at Quality Perforating Inc. in Carbondale, Pa. “If you use a pattern with a stagger to it, make sure it is on a 45-degree angle/pattern,” he says. “Normal industry perforated patterns are 60 degrees; do not use that. I don’t like using a 60-degree pattern because if you don’t orient them the same direction when you install or replace, they won’t match the rest of the ceiling.”

In comparison, panels can have custom cluster perforations or individual perforations to create distinct designs, machined with a CNC machine, Corpolongo says. “We’ve done a job where it effectively looked like bubbles floating through a ceiling. [The perforations] were ovals and different sizes; they were placed differently to give a sense of bubbles in a ceiling.”

Custom perforation patterns can be set to traverse multiple panels, increasing the overall size of the pattern’s field, Corpolongo says. “We’ve seen some projects where it’s a 4-foot by 4-foot panel, and [the designers] aren’t getting the look they want within that one panel. So they’ll create a repeating pattern over multiple 4-by-4s, maybe four 4-by-4s, so 16 feet by 16 feet is creating one repetition of the pattern.”

Another way metal ceiling panels are customized with perforations is with imagery. Armstrong takes digital photos, logos and other graphics and converts them into perforated images, Holdridge says. For instance, combined with custom perforations, backlighting and folded ceiling planes, Etihad Airways’ lounge at JFK International Airport in New York City is a good example of employing several customization methods.

“Sometimes people combine all of those things together like Etihad Airways lounge, which has this folding ceiling kind of randomized look, but it also was backlit with a custom perforation,” Holdridge says. “It almost looks like an antique Persian lamp, and it was a combination of metal and polycarbonate to create this backlit glowing effect to the ceiling.”

In addition to giving a ceiling open area with perforations, open area can be increased to 70 percent or more with expanded metals, which allows lights and sprinkler systems to be placed above them. For example, for the Tellepsen Family Downtown YMCA in Houston, Scott Cutlip, AIA, senior associate at Kirksey Architecture, also in Houston, says expanded metal met performance and appearance goals for the project. In a case study from Minneapolis-based Pinta Acoustic Inc., which supplied its expanded ceiling tiles for the project, Cutlip says, “We wanted a clean, modern aesthetic for a new downtown building, with the light fixtures visible above the ceiling plane. We wanted to keep the ceiling height, which we could not achieve with a solid ceiling plane. The lattice or mesh look of expanded metal tiles achieved the airy look we wanted in the public spaces of the project.”

Light Fixture Focus

With respect to lighting, Holdridge says he’s seeing a lot of consideration being given to types of lighting fixtures in metal ceilings and how they are incorporated in the design. Some design concepts have called for light fixtures to be the same length as the ceiling panels. The problem is the suspension system above prevents that from happening, he says. However, there are ways to achieve the same type of appearances designers seek in these cases.

“If [designers] have a light fixture off center from the grid so it’s shifted over for a 4-inch light, and they’ve got the edge of that light on center with the grid, but then it goes 4 inches into that panel, we can make the panel next to it 4 inches narrower to accommodate the light,” Holdridge says. “With the grid, we might start and stop the main beam. We just have a segment of that main beam shifted over so it avoids the grid flange. Sometimes we do offset clips that we can incorporate into the suspension that push things over. There are filler strips that we sometimes recommend using that might only be 15/16-inch wide, so they’re actually pushing the light fixture over 15/16-inch. There are different things we can do with the suspension to make it coordinate.”

Corpolongo says he’s seeing light fixtures as an aspect of metal ceiling design that’s getting an increasing amount of attention as well. It’s one of the reasons he cites behind the popularity of metal beam baffles and grille systems. Linear lighting can fit neatly between baffles or blades of a grille. Furthermore, open air returns and other fixtures can be concealed above the systems. “It’s less disrupted by the mechanicals and it doesn’t impede the performance really because it’s a very open system,” he says.

The focus isn’t always so much on concealing light fixtures as it is on incorporating them in ways that are visually pleasing overall, Corpolongo says. For one airport project, a large format torsion spring system was used. Large ceiling pods, 30 to 50 feet in length are bordered by linear lighting. “There was a gap between [the pods], and [the designers] ran long linear lights between the gaps of the metal ceiling. You create a break between the ceiling for the light fixture so they’re stand-alone entities, but then, as a whole, it creates a very nice visual.”

Custom Colors

Custom colors are becoming more common for metal ceilings, Corpolongo says. Schools matching school colors, companies matching branding colors and others specific to individual projects are becoming more the norm. “We’re seeing more unique color choices, not something that’s typical that they just pull off of a sheet and say here’s your color code. It’s more of, ‘Hey, I’ve got this coffee cup that is this weird pink; can you guys match it?’ And yes, we can.”