Decorative steel panels take décor to new heights

A decorative steel panel at the entrance. PHOTO | DELFHIN MUGO

 

What you need to know:

  • You can have one as a garden screen or have one intricately designed and hang it on an interior wall.
  • The balcony and the ceiling are other places you can decorate with steel panels, although you must exercise great caution.
  • “It is not as strong as normal grilles. This is just steel that we have cut through, making it more flimsy and thus easier for burglars to cut through,” says Ms Orwa.

When decorating whether the inside of their houses or the outside, most people tend to think of art pieces, plants, colourful metallic finishes and murals. However, steel panels, which are just catching on in the country, look set be a game changer.

Ms Hellen Orwa, one of the directors of Siance Manufacturing Ltd, which makes decorative steel panels, says steel is no longer restricted just to making gates and grilles but has been extended to other parts of the home.

 “You can have it on the perimeter fence, for instance.  People nowadays build their fences just halfway so instead of having metallic grilles to complete the fence, you could have steel panels,” she says.

You can have one as a garden screen or have one intricately designed and hang it on an interior wall.

FLIMSY SCREENS

The balcony and the ceiling are other places you can decorate with steel panels, although you must exercise great caution.

“It is not as strong as normal grilles. This is just steel that we have cut through, making it more flimsy and thus easier for burglars to cut through,” says Ms Orwa.

To get décor ideas for the steel panel you want, Ms Orwa says, you can search the Internet. 

Until recently, steel panels were used mostly in industrial reasons, but a spot check by DN2 revealed that imported, ready-made steel panels are available.

“Ms Orwa says that the advantage of having a panel made locally is that you can decide on the design, and even have it personalised further by having your name or that of your loved one cut out on it.

So what does making a steel wall panel involve?

“Once we receive the design from the client, we use computer aided design (CAD) to draw it and then feed that into the computer numerical control (CNC) machines, which cut the steel to specification. The process takes only minutes since it is fully computerised,” says Ms Orwa.

Thereafter, the cut panels are coated with a special powder to prevent rusting.

Ms Orwa says the cost of decorating using steel depends on the area to be covered, its dimensions and the thickness of the steel used.

The panels are hardy and can last a long time.