All About Facade Cladding

Drawing the line between indoors and outdoors, facade cladding not only shelters a building against the weather and environmental elements, but also drives the appearance of a building. The way facade cladding interacts with the environment is essential to how we experience a building. The various types of facade cladding seem nearly endless, and ongoing innovation ensure cladding solutions for nearly every climate or desired appearance. 

With Archello’s product selector, you can efficiently and comprehensively filter through today’s top facade cladding products and solutions, finding the latest trends, inspirations and innovations in facades. Our carefully curated categories of facade cladding products is broken down into the following categories: metal, wood, brick, stone and reconstituted stone, concrete, ceramics, plastic, composites as well as special 3D facade cladding types.

Metal Facade cladding

Certainly one of the most ideal materials for facades, metal cladding materials and products are renowned for their functionality, relatively low cost and sleek visual appearance. Metal can be painted and coated as desired before between transformed into a wide range of facade cladding types including sheets, profiles, cassettes and panels. Metal mesh cladding is another category in this area, which along with perforated sheets and expanded metal mesh profiles create particularly striking architectural results. Key manufacturers of metal facade cladding included in our product guide include Euramax, Alucoil, Arubis Benelux, VMZinc, Haver and Boecker as well as Banker Wire.

Wood Facade cladding

Beautiful by nature, wood is a highly ecological material favoured today especially in light of the green building movement. Wood cladding has of course been used widely over history in traditional cladding applications, but recent innovations in engineered wood and wood facade products - including superior resistance to fire, rot and other extreme environmental elements - mean that wood is more popular than ever as a facade cladding solution. Top innovators in this area to explore in the Archello product guide include Decospan, Fundermax, Rieder, Derako, Accoya, Moso and Novawood - to name only a few!

Brick Facade cladding

Another classic facade material, brick cladding is favoured for the endless array of colours, textures, shapes that are available. This category of facade cladding includes natural clay bricks, brick slips, as well as special bricks cut with unique profiles. Names to know include Wienerberger, the Vandersanden Group, Petersen Bruppen, Gammastone and Brickwroks Vande Moortel.

Stone Facade cladding

Stone and reconstituted stone cladding is not only elegant and beautiful but can achieve a wide range of looks ranging from natural and rough to refined and highly architectural. In additional to specifying stone for its natural beauty, the benefits of specifying stone cladding include performance characteristics such as a lack of required maintenance, as well as exceptional resistance to staining, freeze-thaw cycles and other extreme environmental conditions. Leaders in stone facade cladding solutions to explore include Rockpanel, IMI-Beton, Cosentino and Keller Systeme AG.

Concrete Facade cladding

The innumerable options available in terms of form, composition and surface make pre-cast concrete facade cladding enormously popular and nearly universally ubiquitous in modern architecture. From the 1960’s onward, this material has dominated modern architecture thanks to the functional, aesthetic and cost-effective benefits that it brings. Highly versatile, it is available not only as a flat panel but curved forms are also possible. Possible surface treatments are endless, including relief or imprinted, polished or sandblasted. Great examples of today’s best products in this category come from names such as Equitone, Rieder Smart Elements, Cembrit and Corian design.

Ceramic Facade cladding

Ceramic facades are able to convey numerous looks and impressions ranging from wood and metal to stone. Ceramic facade cladding offers additional advantages including durability thanks to various coatings that can be applied. This includes highly popular self-cleaning coatings. Ceramic tiles are also widely loved because of the range of colours, patterns and designs that are available. Some our favourite manufacturers that can be found int he product guide include Koninklijke Tichelaar, Agrob Buchtal, Porcelanosa, Mosa and Ceramiche Cesar.

Plastic Facade Cladding

Plastic has recently become one of the most widely used materials for facade cladding. This material has many advantages when it comes to assembly and maintenance as it is not only low-maintenance but also very durable. Plastic facade cladding solution are also available in endless finishes and colours, Plastic is particularly favoured in new constructions, as well as renovations where low-cost construction options are desired. Some of the most innovative names names to explore through our Product Selector include Rodeca, Everlite Concept and Dott Gallina.

Composite Facade cladding

Lightweight, recyclable and available in many differenT colours, composite facade cladding is an area where much of today’s most interesting advancements in facade cladding products is taking place. Composites typically consist of panels, measuring between three and five millimeters thick, with a core sandwiched between two exterior faces. This assembly results in systems that are increasingly lightweight and high performing. The reduced weight that results from the use of composite facade cladding often results in lower cost structural support systems. Composites can also be customized to meet almost any style of desired appearance. The inclusion of biobased materials within composites is another area where much interesting development is taking place, particularly with companies and as Lankhorst. Other top names to know in this area of composite facade cladding include 3A Composites, Trespa, Kalwall, Wacotech, Hunter Douglas and Swisspearl.

Special 3D facade cladding

And finally, we take a look at special 3D facades. 3D facade elements offer the ultimate opportunity for a distinctive facacade that will certainly be one of a kind. Explore the product guide to discover more about the most intriguing inventions from companies such as Metadecor, Sto, Lotte Advanced Materials and Casalgrande Padana.

Whether you are an architect or engineer, contractor of builder, we invite you to explore our product selector to be inspired and supported in specifying exterior facade cladding in your next project.