Interior · Expertise
Metal Ceilings
The surface everyone looks at and nobody plans for.
The fifth surface, treated with the same rigour as the walls beneath it — baffles, open cells, coves and panels that carry light as well as pattern.
A metal ceiling has to do several things at once: hold a level line across a long span, conceal its own suspension, allow access to the services above it, and integrate lighting without visible compromise. It also has to be light enough to hang safely.
We build baffle ceilings from closely spaced fins, open-cell grids, perforated and laser-cut panels, coffered and domed features, and continuous folded coves with integrated light slots.
Setting out matters more here than almost anywhere else, because a ceiling is read from below across its whole length. We resolve the module, the perimeter condition and the light fitting positions on the drawing before we cut.
Designed from the services down
Above a metal ceiling there are ducts, sprinklers, cables, lights and the structure itself, and every one of them has an opinion about where the ceiling can go. The fin spacing, the baffle depth, the light slot — these are drawn around what has to pass through, not before it. A ceiling drawn without the services drawing is redrawn on site, at cost.
Access is the other decision. Something above the ceiling will need reaching, and a panel that lifts out cleanly and drops back true is the difference between a ceiling that still looks new after ten years of maintenance and one that has been visibly opened.
How it is built
Where it is used
- Baffle and fin ceilings
- Open-cell and grid ceiling systems
- Laser-cut and perforated ceiling panels
- Coves, bulkheads and integrated light slots
- Domed and coffered ceiling features
- Suspended sculptural ceiling installations
Photographs
Ceilings we have made
From the workshop and from finished interiors. Click a picture to see it larger.
Applications
Where it goes
Questions & answers
Questions about ceilings
Can services above a metal ceiling still be reached?
Yes, if the ceiling is designed around it. Baffle and open-cell systems give access by their nature; solid and coffered ceilings need panels that lift out and drop back true without marking. Where the access is needed — over a valve, a damper, a junction box — is settled with the services drawing before the ceiling is set out.
How is a metal ceiling kept level across a long room?
On its suspension, not on the panels. A grid or a set of hangers is levelled first, checked with a laser, and the ceiling elements are hung from it. Trying to level a ceiling by adjusting the visible panels never works — the eye reads the line of the edges, and that line comes from what they hang on.
More interior work
Often specified together
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