Architecture and Design
Seven finishes, one material
Under every finish there is the same steel. The skin changes, not the core. Seven ways to dress the same material. Plus one, made to measure, that never ends.
· 2 min read
A Fontealta shower column can look like a liquid mirror or dark stone, like warm bronze or freshly brushed copper. It can disappear against a pale wall or become the fixed point of an outdoor space. And yet, behind every version, there is always the same heart: AISI 316.
It is a simple and radical idea at once. The finish is not a coating applied over something poorer: it is the way we treat, work and protect the only steel we use. The surface changes, the substance does not. That is why durability is the same, whichever skin you choose.
The seven finishes fall into a few broad families.
There are the natural steels: the mirror, which captures light and landscape and gives them back in motion; and the brushed, more restrained, more tactile, which brings the grain of the metal to the surface and lets it speak softly.
There is matt black, which removes every reflection and turns the tap into a graphic sign: perfect where steel must not shine but define.
There are the warm metals: bronze and copper tones, obtained with PVD processes that fix the colour inside the surface, not on top. They are finishes that give warmth without giving up resistance: the same 316, with a different colour temperature.
And then there is the ninth possibility, the one that is not on the wheel: custom colour. RAL, Pantone, NCS: the shade the project needs, even just one, even never seen before. It is the most direct legacy of the yacht world, where every detail is made for a single vessel and nothing is “standard”. A column that becomes exactly the colour of a wall, of a stone, of an idea.
Seven finishes, then, and an open horizon. But always just one material underneath. Because the freedom to choose how an object looks only makes sense if you do not have to give up what makes it last. With us you do not choose between beauty and durability. You choose how something that will last anyway should be beautiful.