Powder Coating and RAL Colours: Finishing Aluminium Properly

Powder coating is why an aluminium window can be any colour you can point at and still carry a 25-year finish guarantee. Electrostatically charged powder is sprayed onto the pre-treated profile, then baked into a continuous cured skin — no solvents, no brush marks, no repainting weekends for the life of the coating. The decisions left to you are the enjoyable ones: which colour, which texture, and whether the inside matches the outside.

The RAL palette, and how to choose from it

RAL is the shared colour language of the industry — "RAL 7016 anthracite grey" means the same shade in every factory. The classic palette holds around two hundred colours, and effectively all of them are available. Some practical steering:

• The modern staples: anthracite 7016, black 9005, and the grey-beige family (7039, 7048) dominate contemporary builds for a reason — they flatter brick, render and stone alike.
• Heritage and character: deep greens, bronzes and off-blacks suit period settings and steel-look glazing.
• Sample outdoors: colours read differently in daylight than on screens or swatch cards. Ask for sprayed samples and look at them against the actual wall, at midday and dusk.

Matt, gloss or textured

Gloss levels change a colour's character as much as the shade itself. Matt finishes are the contemporary default — soft, architectural, forgiving of fingerprints. Satin adds a little life; full gloss is now mostly a heritage or feature choice. Fine-textured finishes add a slight grain that hides handling marks brilliantly (popular in dark shades), and wood-effect finishes — oak, walnut and similar — give timber warmth on maintenance-free metal, convincing enough that visitors touch them to check.

Dual colour: two rooms, one frame

Because our profiles are assembled from inner and outer sections across a thermal break, the two faces can be coated differently — anthracite to the street, soft white to the kitchen. It is a standard option across windows, doors and bi-folds, and it solves the eternal "dark outside, light inside" argument permanently.

Quality behind the colour

The finish is only as good as the preparation beneath it, which is why coating quality schemes such as Qualicoat matter: certified pre-treatment, minimum coating thicknesses (60 microns), and tested adhesion and weathering. That is the machinery behind the up-to-25-year guarantee — and coastal projects step up to marine classes, covered in our coastal specification guide.

Choosing yours

Name a RAL, or describe the effect and let us shortlist. Samples come before commitment; the quotation states colour, gloss and guarantee in writing.