Metal paneling is a highly versatile, cost-effective material flexible enough to fit a building’s aesthetic and structural requirements. To accentuate its appearance there is a wide variety of options available in various finishes, colors, textures, profiles, coatings and customization.
Timely trends and innovations are producing all-new, intriguing building design inspiration
The veterans administration medical center contrasted zinc cladding with clear anodized aluminum.
Photo courtesy of JRA Architects
Kiki Redhead, global CMF and trend manager at Sherwin-Williams DesignHouse, Minneapolis, believes today’s trends for architectural metal finishes and coatings are centered around elevation. “With the revolutions in coatings technologies and design capabilities, a building can be more than a building. Special effects and trending colors enhance the appearance of a façade and help break from the noise. A metal wall panel can be glossy champagne. An entryway can evoke nature with woodgrain-print metal components. Curtainwalls can attract visual depth with a speckle of shimmer or cloudburst of sheen. The coating possibilities allow for all-new, ever-intriguing design inspiration.”
Color
Metal panels can be finished in over 40 unique colors. With so many options for customization, architects and designers can specify a hue that fits a project’s needs without compromising their aesthetic vision. “While colors can be brilliant, they can also be more subtle, providing either a minimal feel or rustic charm depending on the context,” says Brian McLaughlin, national sales manager, Drexel Metals, Louisville, Ky. “Their unique ability to deliver form and function is why metal roofing systems have become increasingly popular over the last several years.”
Bright colors accent The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Buerger Center for Advanced Pediatric Care.
Photo courtesy of Sherwin-Williams DesignHouse
Working as a design partner at Durham, N.C.-based Little Diversified Architectural Consulting, Michael Coates, AIA, sees “a seemingly endless range of colors and coatings, from standard options to fully custom selections. With the variety of colors, coatings and textures available, metal finishes can support strong visual branding, as evidenced in the pre-patina copper panels used in Wake Med’s Cameron Village in Raleigh, N.C. This two-story medical office building houses a variety of outpatient clinics and serves as a brand ambassador for WakeMed. In addition to brand identity, exterior metal finishes can also promote wayfinding, such as using distinct metal paneling around entryways.”
Looking at today’s metal finish trends, McLaughlin contends black is by far the most sought-after color for exterior applications. “Applied on a roof, this dramatic color choice makes it possible for architects and designers to lend a contemporary, high-design look to a building or a home while delivering the premium durability and weather resistance of a metal system.”
The preferences for colors, along with sheens, appear to be widening among designers and owners. Gary Edgar, architectural specification manager for Pittsburgh-based PPG Building Products, explains that in the past, gray, silvers and bronzes were standard for designs. “While this color family is still widely used, brighter, higher sheen coatings are being requested more often.”
Black is a sought-after color for exterior applications creating a contemporary, high-design look to a building or a home while delivering the premium durability and weather resistance of a metal system.
Photo courtesy of Drexel Metal
In an exciting development, trends for metal-inspired tones are heating up in the market. While metallic finishes have long trended cooler to mimic trends of stainless steel and gray interiors, Redhead is witnessing a shift toward warmer tones. “Coppers and bronzes are seeing a resurgence to meet trends in both architectural and interior design markets.” Redhead has also witnessed a warming period happening across many colors, not just those mimicking metal. “Colors that have dominated our neutral spaces—such as deep navy, subtle gray, dark black and stark white hues—are also gradually lightening and shifting warmer. It’s not an overnight occurrence, but we are starting to see green-grays and linen-whites take precedence in building markets. These new neutrals are expanding color schemes and brightening our building envelopes overall. We discuss this trend and more in our latest Sherwin-Williams architectural metal coatings color forecast, FUSE, where we present colors and effects to support architects and product manufacturers in their projects.”
Special Effects
While colors are, and always will be, an integral factor in metal panel appearance, there is additional customization to be found with special effects. Edgar believes structured or disruptive finishes are becoming more popular, as a basis of design or as an accent on selected elevations or selected profiles. “These range from a modest somewhat smooth, glossy textures to coarse, matte appearances, with multicolor, mica/metallic effects, or even polychromatic pigments that change color with different angles and lighting.”
Woodgrain for exterior wall applications is being seen more and more as architects look for creative ways to enhance wall aesthetics with the use of varied colors and highly textural, realistic grain patterns across the surface. In many situations, metal coatings that simulate natural materials are more cost effective than using the natural material itself. Another reason for their increased use is metal coatings can provide a wood-like appearance without wood decay.
Simulated-wood panels can add warmth to a building’s overall, creating a seamless look from outside to inside. Coates says this popular trend can be experienced at the Ravenscroft School’s Olander Center for Student Life at the A.E. Finley Activity Center in Raleigh, N.C.
The 15000 Aviation building exterior in Hawthorne, Calif., was given a new appearance via a custom-colored, mica-based formulation façade restoration.
Photo courtesy of APV Engineered Coatings
Texturing is growing in popularity. Redhead explains that texture adds dimension to a coating and is an effective tool in masking defects on a substrate. “More often, textural effects are being used to add visual depth alongside solid finishes. Many also choose textures for their tactility, which can bring a hands-on, organic resonance to a structure. By including a few different textural elements, designers add complexity and movement to their projects.”
Bill Zahner, CEO at Kansas City, Mo.-based A. Zahner Co., explains textures can reflect light in a diffuse manner especially on stainless steel, or others such as Linen finish, an embossed texture, are subtle surface alternations that diffuses the light, yet still possesses a high luster. “The soft matte finish that anodizing on aluminum provides is also considered more frequently today due to the refinements that have been made in the anodizing process. SoFi Stadium [in Inglewood, Calif.], for example, uses a Frost white anodize surface on 34,000 custom perforated panels.”
Moving Away from Off the Shelf
Building owners and architects are moving away from off-the-shelf paint to complete, engineered coating systems. They are focused more than ever on the sustainability and long-term performance of the exterior restoration coatings they specify, especially in warm, coastal areas like Florida, Texas and California.
Ernie Porco, product applications engineer at APV Engineered Coatings, Akron, Ohio, explains that it’s not uncommon for off-the-shelf or even premium latex and urethane-based paints to fade and degrade after only about five years exposed to high UV rays, high heat, humidity and salt spray. “This coating degradation creates more than just an eyesore and bad curb appeal—it can also expose the underlying exterior substrate to damage. Moreover, degraded, chalky paint can be washed off the building surface during heavy rains or power washing, allowing the residue to enter the ground and subsequently contaminate the ground water. Having to re-coat a building every five years is a costly endeavor that is disruptive to building occupants.”
All of these issues are prompting architects to specify engineered coating systems that use PVDF resin as a binder, along with complex inorganic pigments to resist the film erosion that leads to fading and chalking. Porco believes, “These high-performance PVDF-based coatings are letting architects better design with and specify bright and bold colors, secure in the knowledge that those colors will remain true for the long term. On the other end of the spectrum, high-performance, PVDF-based coatings are critical for white exterior surfaces as well, especially in high humidity environments. When latex and urethane paints break down and the paint film turns chalky, it is not always noticeable against the white surface, but the paint is losing its protective qualities.”
The Peterson Automotive Museum in Los Angeles comprises stainless steel plates and red painted aluminum over an interior steel and aluminum support system.
Photo courtesy of A. Zahner Co.
Metal Seen as Metal
There is a growing trend of using an exterior metal finish in a way that expresses its material essence, i.e., metal looking like metal. Redhead sees this metal mimicry growing in demand for his customers. “Designers and manufacturers alike are drawn to the clean, sleek look of metal with the assurance that their coating will last against the elements. We developed a color card specifically for metal color trends, which presents a selection of metal-inspired hues in our made-to-last Fluorpon 70% PVDF coatings.”
This natural aluminum-like appearance can be achieved using anodized aluminum. However, Edgar cautions it is difficult to touch up if damaged and warranties are not as long as FGIA/AAMA 2605 coatings, such as PPG’s CORAFLON PLATINUM powder coating. “This look is achievable, along with black, champagne anodized finishes, with our powder coatings by lowering the sheen and adding special effect pigments to simulate the natural appearance of aluminum, but with long-term durability and a product that can be repaired in the field if necessary.”
The Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles expresses this trend because of its flowing surfaces of lightweight yet durable metal. Composed of stainless steel plates and red painted aluminum over an interior steel and aluminum support system, these ribbons appear in a way that Zahner says defy gravity. “They reflect light and glow from the natural light during the day and the artificial light during the evening. This building says metal, and embraces modern art and architecture while invoking the American love of the automobile. One hundred years from now, people will still go by this building and go WOW.”
Because of its exterior flat surfaces of extruded anodized aluminum paneling, Porco calls the 15000 Aviation building exterior restoration project in Hawthorne, Calif., a perfect example of this. It had been painted several times since it was constructed in 1972 with a matte, silver-gray aluminum-colored paint. “The multiple paint layers had degraded and lost their adhesion, leading to widespread delamination and flaking. Due to the historical nature of the building, and to keep the look and design intent of its original clear and anodized aluminum finish, APV Engineered Coatings engineered a custom-colored, mica-based formulation NeverFade Façade Restoration Coating to match the original metallic look. To ensure the metallic aesthetic, the coating crew brush-rolled the first layer of topcoat before spray-applying a dusting of the final coat.” Looking to the future of finishes, Zahner predicts an “explosion in creativity of exterior metal finishes” as designers and manufacturers grasp the ability to create unique surfaces with metal that are affordable. “We are still stuck on the thought that repeatability is the only way to keep cost down, but technology has removed this constraint.”