Decorative metal panels:
the pattern is the last
decision, not the first

Decorative sheet metal is one material with four pattern families; the family is the decision. Everything after it — depth, sheet thickness, base finish — follows from which family you chose.

• Embossed. The sheet is pressed into a former, so the pattern is a shape in the sheet with a front and a back. Depth up to 1.5 mm. Reads as sculpture.
• Etched. Metal removed chemically, so the pattern can stop halfway. Depth from 0.05 to 0.3 mm. Reads as a tone change, not a shape.
• Random / vibration. A non-repeating grain applied by hand-held abrasive. No pattern to line up, so no pattern to get wrong.
• Perforated. Holes on a pitch. The only family where the light passes through, which makes it a screen as well as a surface.

Stainless steel metal panels keep their colour in a scratch, because the colour is the alloy. That is the argument for decorative work in stainless rather than in coated aluminium: a patterned surface has more edges to damage than a flat one, and a scratch on coated metal is white.

Ornamental sheet metal panels are judged in profile: depth decides whether the sheet will fold. A 1.2 mm embossment in a 1.2 mm sheet has stretched the material; that panel will not take a tight return without the pattern distorting at the bend.

Decorative sheet metal panels are quoted by the sheet, because the pattern sets the yield. A pattern that repeats every 300 mm across a 1220 mm sheet gives four repeats and 20 mm of waste either side — and that waste is in the price whether the drawing shows it or not.

A decorative metal panel is approved as a sample under your light, not from a photo. This is the single most expensive lesson in the section: a pattern that reads beautifully in a supplier's photograph, taken with a raking light at 30 degrees, can disappear completely in a lobby lit from directly above.

What depth does to a cleaning regime

• Under 0.2 mm — wipes clean with a cloth. No trap for dust.
• 0.2 to 0.5 mm — needs a brush or a cloth worked along the pattern, not across it.
• Over 0.5 mm — needs a brush and, on a vertical exterior face, it needs to drain. A deep pattern facing up is a planter.

Decorative metal panels exterior need a drained cavity and stainless fixings, or the pattern traps water. A pattern is a set of small dams; on a vertical face it will hold a film of water long after the rain stops, and a mild steel screw behind it will be the first thing to fail.

Interior metal panels can be flat and thin; exterior ones cannot. Wind load on an exterior panel is a pressure measured in kilopascals, and a 0.8 mm sheet with no return will flex under it — which, on a patterned face, means the pattern moves.

Impact is a horizontal band

Decorative wall metal panels in a corridor take impact at 900 mm, so specify 1.2 mm there. Not the whole wall: the bottom 1200 mm, where trolleys, shoes and cleaning machines arrive. Above that, 0.8 mm is fine and cheaper.

Metal panels for walls arrive numbered to the elevation they belong to. That matters more on a patterned panel than on a plain one, because two panels of the same pattern are indistinguishable on a pallet and completely different once the pattern has to run continuously across a joint.

Decorative metal panels for walls read differently under downlight and under wall-wash. A downlight at 30 degrees grazes the surface and throws a shadow from every 0.3 mm of depth; a wall-wash at 80 degrees flattens it. A pattern approved under one is not the pattern delivered under the other.

A deco metal panel sample under your own lighting is the only approval that holds. We send the sample and ask for the lighting specification; if there is no lighting specification yet, we say that the approval is provisional and why.

Decorative panels metal, metal decorative panels and decorative metal panels are the same product; only the word order differs. What does differ is the sheet behind the pattern: the same embossment on 1.2 mm and on 0.8 mm is a different object, because the thinner sheet deflects between the pattern's high points.

One consequence worth stating: on a mirror or PVD base, an embossed pattern multiplies every reflection and the wall becomes a distorted room. On a bead-blasted or matte base the same pattern reads as texture. Both are correct; only one is usually meant.