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How to Choose Outdoor Privacy Screens

Outdoor privacy screens are the ultimate architectural multitaskers, needing to block unwanted views while still allowing light and airflow, all while adding style to the space.

With so many demands to meet, one material does it all: Perforated metal. It’s the top choice for projects where balancing light, privacy, and ventilation is crucial, such as residential apartments, public centres, and schools.

But which perforated metal designs are best for outdoor privacy screens? What must be considered to guarantee performance, privacy, and style? Here’s your quick guide to specifying perforated metal outdoor privacy screens and some of our best projects for privacy screen inspiration.

Outdoor Privacy Screens: Which Design and Metal?

Perforated metal’s design flexibility is one of its biggest advantages for outdoor privacy screens and panels.

No other material allows the same level of customisation. With perforated metal, the hole size, shape, pitch, metal type, and finish can all be designed to your exact specifications to achieve a precise level of openness, privacy, durability, and visual appeal.

Panels can also be perforated with your own design, using images of nature or old photographs.

Click on photos to enlarge

However, certain factors will impact which designs and metals are most suitable for your outdoor privacy screens. These include:

• The function: Will the panels be installed over windows or as stand-alone screening to separate, hide or add privacy to a space, such as a garden?

• Sun exposure: What is the level of sun exposure and shading of the installation site? Building elevations and areas with intense sun, for instance, need a pattern that minimises glare and heat. A panel design with a lower open area percentage – where more of the panel is solid – is ideal for spaces in all-day sun.

• The location environment: Such as coastal or waterside developments, where screens will need protection against corrosion. Aluminium is the go-to metal for outdoor privacy screens for most projects, as it’s lightweight and can be finished with coloured and durable coatings.

• The visual goal: Is there a specific aesthetic that needs to be achieved? Themed screens – such as leaves, drawings, or words – are an easy way to bring a unique or local touch to a project. Using our custom software and punching machinery, we can recreate almost any image, graphic, logo or text in perforated metal.

• Project budget and timescales: If budget and time are limited, standard perforation patterns and in-stock panels are the quickest and most cost-effective design options compared to a complete custom perforation.

If you need selection help, our Arrow Metal design experts will help you narrow your pattern and metal choices, ensuring that all options meet your project brief.

Outdoor Privacy Screen Project Successes: Uses and Ideas

Need some ideas? Explore the different ways our contractor clients have specified perforated metal outdoor privacy screens for successful project delivery in both the public and private sectors, including schools, leisure centres, residential developments, and apartments:

Splenda Apartments

At Splenda Apartments in Botany, clever colour use transforms the privacy screen design from simple to striking. The panels are perforated in standard classic round pattern 239 – but the bright copper finish adds visual appeal. The outdoor privacy screens were installed on the North and West-facing balconies only – the building sides with the strongest sun yet also with stunning city views that are not compromised thanks to the pattern design. 

Sunbury Aquatic Centre

Swimmer privacy plus aesthetics were the crucial goals for Hume Council’s Sunbury Aquatic Centre, with giant perforated privacy screens delivering the perfect result for the new therapeutic facility. We custom-perforated 4m-long panels to create an undulating wave pattern around the building, with no horizontal joins for seamless installation and effect. This project proves that size is no limitation when it comes to privacy screen designs – we can perforate panels up to 5m in length.

Carrington Assisted Living

For the Carrington Assisted Living complex, the surrounding bushland inspired its outdoor privacy screens. We custom-perforated panels in a delicate leaf design, blending the facility’s lush natural environment with the building design. Installed throughout the complex, the panels offer residents privacy and create a cohesive design scheme, cleverly connecting its different areas.

Canterbury South Public School

How do you tackle different levels of sun across building elevations and create a harmonious design at the same time? The answer to Canterbury South Public School’s challenge was perforated metal. All the school’s new outdoor privacy screens feature a standard or mixed round hole pattern, carefully specified to minimise or maximise solar heat and glare. With its constant sun, the North side has a minimal open design, whilst the screens on the shady West side have double the open area percentage for more light and warmth.

How to Specify the Right Outdoor Privacy Screens for Your Project

If you have outdoor privacy screens in your project brief or tender, contact the Arrow Metal team for expert advice and support on (02) 9748 2200 or email sales@arrowmetal.com.au.

We’ll advise the best pattern options and metals for your project and provide samples.

Browse popular patterns here and explore custom screen possibilities through our PixelPerf service. You can also download our brochure to learn more about our perforated metal capabilities across your projects.

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