Aluminum foam interior walls: a metal surface you can install with a joinery shop

Interior walls are the part of a building people actually touch. Hands, chairs, luggage, trolleys. That is why so many interior metal finishes are either thin skins that dent, or coatings that scratch through to something else. Aluminum foam is the same material from front to back, so there is nothing to scratch through. What you see at the surface is what is underneath it.

Works like a panel, reads like metal

The thing that surprises contractors is how ordinary the material is to work with. It saws with a woodworking blade, drills cleanly, routs, and takes screws and construction adhesive. A joinery shop can cut, edge and fit it without sending it out to a metal fabricator. For a wall lining, a reception desk front, a lift lobby or a corridor dado, that changes the cost and the programme in a way that a solid metal plate never could.

Three grades from one system

Fine, medium and coarse cell panels are all 20 mm, all 300 × 300 mm in the sample size, and all detail the same way. A project can use fine cell where the surface is touched most, medium as the general wall surface, and coarse where the wall is meant to be looked at. The joints and fixings do not change.

Partitions and screens

Because the panel is stiff for its weight, it can be used as a free-standing screen or partition infill rather than only as a lining. With a slim aluminum channel at the edges, a 20 mm panel makes a screen that is visually solid, light to move, and not a fire-load problem. Open-cell texture on both faces means a partition that looks finished from either side.

Edges and junctions

• Leave edges raw where the panel meets a shadow gap; the section is part of the look.
• Frame in aluminum, timber or steel where the edge will be touched or where panels meet other materials.
• Natural variation between panels is expected. Lay out a wall from panels drawn across the delivery, not in order.
• Clean with water and a soft brush; there is no coating to protect and nothing to clog.

Where it has been specified

Hospitality, retail, workplace lobbies and residential feature walls are the usual places. The material is also appearing in furniture and fitted joinery, where the same panel becomes a door or a table front; see aluminum foam in furniture and objects. For all uses, see Applications.

Hold the material before you decide. The Standard Sample Kit is one 300 × 300 × 20 mm panel; the Designer Kit is three cell grades side by side. Both ship free within the United States.