Perforated metal facades, screens and mesh

Perforated metal turns a solid sheet into a screen. By punching a pattern of openings into brass, bronze, stainless or steel, a panel can filter light, soften a view, let air move and quiet a sound, while still reading as one considered surface. It is the material that lets a building breathe without losing its line.

Alongside perforated sheet sit two relatives. Expanded metal is slit and stretched from a single sheet into a diamond lattice, rigid and economical with no waste. Woven and welded mesh is built from wires or rods into an open grid, from a fine fabric-like veil to a heavy architectural net. Each carries a different open area, depth and texture, and each is chosen for the job the screen has to do.

The pattern is the design. Hole size, shape, spacing and open area decide how much light passes, how private a space stays and how the surface reads up close and from across a street. A small, dense perforation reads almost solid and shimmers; a large, open pattern becomes a graphic screen.

We work to a custom perforation, including graduated patterns where the density shifts across a panel to follow the sun, frame a view or carry an image dissolved into dots. The pattern is resolved against the structure behind it and signed off on a sample before any sheet is cut.

Woven metal mesh brings movement and depth that a flat perforated sheet cannot. Crossed wires or rods catch light along their length, so the surface shifts as you move past it. Stainless steel mesh is the workhorse for exterior and high-traffic positions; brass and bronze mesh bring warmth to interiors, balustrades and feature walls.

Mesh can be tensioned in a frame, hung as a drape or fixed as a rigid panel. We detail the fixing, the frame and the edge so the mesh sits taut and true, and finish it to match the rest of a metal package.

Perforated panels and mesh can be made in brass, bronze, copper, stainless steel and steel, and finished brushed, mirror, hammered or patinated. For colour that holds outdoors and under heavy use, we apply PVD coating to a stainless substrate, in any tone from the PVD colour chart, from gold and bronze to black. For the warmth and ageing of solid metal, see brass finishes and copper and bronze patina in the Journal.

For exterior and marine positions we specify stainless or a salt-tested PVD colour on stainless, so a perforated facade keeps its colour through bright light and salt air for years. Where a darker architectural skin is wanted, corten and weathering steel can be perforated too.

If you are asking whether we make this, the answer is yes. Dekap designs, fabricates and finishes bespoke perforated metal, expanded metal and woven mesh in-house, from a single screen to a panelised facade. We resolve the pattern, the substrate and the fixing, finish to an approved sample, and document the work for contract-grade specification. The same hands carry a panel from drawing to the crated, finished screen on its way to site. See related pieces in our work.