Metal wall cladding restoration is one of the best ways to extend a building’s lifespan and restore its kerb appeal. Colour faded, weathered and rusted cladding can make your premises look shabby, which doesn’t leave a great first impression. Rather than investing in a full replacement, refreshing your commercial cladding can have a huge impact.
This is an environmentally-friendly approach that helps to restore your commercial, industrial or factory premises, while extending the life of the building. It’s also an ideal branding opportunity, as you can colour-match to your company colours for instant recognition.
Not sure if metal wall cladding restoration is right for your business? Read on to learn more about the process, including:
- Why spray cladding is the smart alternative to replacement
- Cost benefits of spraying over replacement
- The environmental impact of choosing spraying over replacement
- Why spraying outperforms manual painting
- How to choose the right industrial coating for your premises
- What to expect during the spraying process
To learn more and to start building a quote, get in touch with The Spraying Company, or explore our Portfolio of work.
Why Cladding Spraying is the Smart Alternative to Replacement
Replacing or recovering cladding is a costly nightmare. When the underlying cladding is structurally sound but simply looking a little worse for wear, the most cost-effective solution would be cladding spraying services.
To help extend the life of the building, we don’t just spray over dirt and damage. We start by preparing the surface to remove any dirt, grime, rust and residue. Any repairs can then be carried out to ensure the structure is weathertight and secure. Next, we mask any areas we don’t want to paint, and then apply paint followed by a durable facade coating.
This is the smart choice for business for a number of reasons. Let’s explore those in more detail.
Substantial Cost Savings for Facility Managers
Replacing the cladding or re-covering the cladding is very expensive due to the additional costs. It would also be highly disruptive to your business, as this would be a more substantial task. With commercial spraying, the process is fast and highly effective. Spraying is much faster than hand-painting and delivers a more even and professional finish. We can even work outside of operational hours to minimise disruption to your business.
Reducing Environmental Impact through Refurbishment
There are also environmental benefits to be enjoyed when you choose to repair and refresh rather than replace. This is essentially a form of retrofitting. Rather than investing in new cladding, you can extend the life of the existing cladding and help to minimise your carbon footprint.
Buildings are responsible for 38% of global energy related carbon emissions, so by extending the life of the building you can extract more value from the in-use embodied carbon. Materials like aluminium are very carbon intensive, so choosing to repair existing cladding will help to avoid the need for virgin resources.
Why Spraying Outperforms Manual Painting
Spray painting offers many benefits over manual painting, the most obvious being that it is so much faster. Once preparation work is completed, the actual process of painting the building is incredibly fast, so you can see the transformation take place over hours rather than waiting days or even weeks for work to be completed.
Operational constraints will often mean that you have a limited window when the work can be completed. Closing down operations while you erect scaffolding to complete a multi-week long paint job is going to be impractical for more businesses. There are also benefits to be seen in the finish and the process of achieving complete coverage.
Achieving a Uniform, Drip-Free Finish on Metal Surfaces
Manual painting will often result in drips and visible brush strokes. Metal can be an unforgiving surface to paint, as the flat texture gives these small faults nowhere to hide. Professional spray painting ensures even coverage, which results in less paint wastage. It also avoids brush strokes, drips and anything else that could deliver a poor finish.
Reaching the Hard-to-Paint Areas: Gaps, Ribs, and Profiles
Another benefit of spray painting over manual painting is the ease of which we can achieve excellent coverage. If you’ve put off your metal wall cladding restoration because you are aware of hard-to-reach areas, this won’t be an issue for our team.
The nature of spray painting means that we can easily access difficult areas and achieve an even and professional finish. The process of electrostatic spraying will atomise the durable facade coating into a fine mist that sticks to tight seams and areas where brushes and rollers cannot reach.
Choosing the Right Industrial Coating for Your Cladding
Before investing in a new lick of paint for your commercial building, it’s important to think about the coating required. With protective and water repellant facade coating, you can extend the life of your paint job and protect the underlying materials against rust, corrosion and UV damage.
Protection Against Corrosion and UV Damage
Your exterior cladding is exposed to the elements all year round, so it makes sense to ensure it is protected. Rust will be your biggest enemy, but we can help to tackle existing rust and protect against future damage.
The correct preparation will help to remove all traces of dirt, grime and existing rust. Small repairs are then carried out before we apply a primer treatment. This primer acts as a physical barrier and a sacrificial layer. If moisture is able to penetrate the outer layers, then the zinc-based primer corrodes rather than the underlying material.
High quality paint followed by protective facade coatings will help the structure to withstand weather and UV damage for years to come.
Selecting Colours That Enhance Your Corporate Identity
Refreshing your commercial cladding doesn’t have to be purely practical, it can also be a branding exercise. To make your premises more instantly recognisable, we can colour-match your cladding to your brand colours.
What to Expect During the Cladding Refurbishment Process
The main thing to keep in mind when planning your cladding refurbishment is that we’ll always work around you. We recognise that closing your premises for painting is impractical, so we’ll work with you to find a suitable solution.
Surface Preparation is the Key to Long-Term Adhesion
The most time-consuming part of the process is the surface preparation. Once this stage is completed, the painting is a breeze, but we need to make sure this is right to ensure long-term adhesion.
Every site is different, and some might have more extensive damage than others. We’ll start by preparing all surfaces, including a deep clean to help remove all dirt, grime and rust. We’ll then carry out repair works as required to help extend the life of your structure.
Minimising On-Site Disruption for Tenants and Customers
We ideally need a period of mild weather to complete the work, and then we can schedule preparation work and painting around your business hours.
It’s worth noting that we adhere to Health & Safety standards for working at height and have comprehensive liability insurance, so you don’t need to worry about our team, your staff, or your customers. We’ll take all necessary precautions to minimise disruption and ensure that all work is completed safely.
How Exterior Painting Increases Commercial Property Value
Renewing your facade coatings is not just great for appearances and branding. It’s also an investment in your commercial property, helping to extend the lifespan of the structure and ensure it remains weather-proof and protected against rust, corrosion and UV damage.
A structure that has been recently painted offers a number of benefits. They’re easier to maintain with regular cleaning and won’t require extensive repairs. The combination of the primer, high quality paint and the protective layer or durable facade coating helps to protect the cladding against moisture.
Final Thoughts
If you’re still on the fence about refreshing your commercial cladding with professional spray painting, we encourage you to get in touch with the team. You can also read additional guides aimed at supporting facility managers tasked with maintaining buildings.