Life in Colour

Martin Saunders, Sales Director at Eurocell Profiles, takes a look at how colour is creating new sales opportunities for fabricators.

“During the last few years, there have been many new pressures on the PVC-u market. Thermal efficiency and the environment have driven most of the recent changes. However, aesthetics are increasingly playing a more important part in our industry, which is leading to a definite move away from the basic white product to coloured profiles.

Much of this is being driven by the style of property, with many building designers looking for something that differentiates their development, or fits in with their often very strong design ideas. You just have to drive through any major city centre to see what I mean. There has been a tremendous influx of city apartments in recent years and one thing you really notice, apart from the amount of glass facades, is a lack of white PVC-u. It is not only city apartments where this is now being seen, take a look at any new housing development and you soon begin to realise that the ubiquitous white profile we all know is being replaced by colour.

In any new or emerging industry, as Henry Ford realized, it is possible to offer a limited amount of options because customers’ expectations are relatively low. Henry Ford was able to get away with ‘any colour as long as it’s black’ for decades, because his customers were inspired by the ‘newness’ of the product itself. However, as markets mature, customer expectations rise, which is one of the reason why Ford Motor Company - and to some extent the PVC-u market – saw an opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction by offering options such as colour.

However, I believe that this can only be good for our industry. Certainly the developments I have seen using cream, grey, black and even red have really set themselves apart from many other run-of-the-mill schemes. Frequently, colour is regarded as simply decorative, serving no useful function as an element of the architectural form.

However, colour is often a misunderstood contributor to the style of a building. Take for instance, our fabricator, Ford Windows based in Sheffield, who used grey to superb effect on a development in the Midlands. The colour actually helped accentuate the effect of openness and space that the architects were trying to achieve. This is because warmer darker colours such as grey or black tend to recess in low light, which make the windows on the property look bigger, creating a much more open look on gloomy winter days. During bright summer days, these colours reflect the light to add optical depth and perspective to the doors and windows. For this site based in open countryside the spectacular effect created by the grey coloured PVC-u really is worth seeing.

Cream as a colour is gaining in popularity too and is helping to make homes feel more distinctive as well as differentiating them from their neighbours. Cream works particularly well with red brick and stone sills, a style of building design found on many of the modern three bedroom townhouses.

We recognized this trend toward colour several years ago and since then it has resulted in a considerable investment in production and administrative systems for us. With cream, most suppliers to the industry only offer a basic range of accessories which tends to mean that fabricators are restricted to offering a limited design choice to their customers, particularly with bespoke conservatories in the home improvement market.

The bespoke market requires a wider range of cream components because each conservatory is different, which of course requires a larger investment in production and stockholding. However, for Eurocell it is important that we help our fabricators grow their business and restricting them from the lucrative home improvement market, on a popular colour such as cream, was not an option for us. The Eurocell cream offer is the only one in the market to provide the complete stocked range of perfectly colour matched profiles including accessories and door panels. Last year we added to this by launching cream roofline including trims, fascia, soffits and guttering which means that fabricators now have the complete bespoke range.

The investment that we have made in coloured profiles, especially cream, allows our fabricators to take full advantage of customer demand both in the new build and refurbishment market. It is important that fabricators know that when they commit to Eurocell we will do everything to make sure they stay ahead of the market.

So what about the future? Everyone likes to make a prediction, and mine is that grey will certainly remain popular, perhaps becoming the second or third most popular colour. After that, black could be the outsider, but on that one I will leave the final outcome to the market.

Of course, white will remain the volume seller, however it can only be a good thing for our industry that colours are now creating new sales opportunities, in addition to creating more diverse and interesting housing developments. What is critical in coloured PVC-u is choosing the right profile supplier, because not having a full suite of accessories can make the difference between a truly distinctive property and one that looks like the colour has been an afterthought.”

Eurocell’s Eurologik window and door system is available in a range of standard and special colours. Standard colours include white, cream and grey along with Golden Oak, Rosewood and Mahogany finishes. All are available on 24 hour leadtimes. In addition over a dozen special colours are available on an extended leadtimes.

Need more info? Please fill in our contact form.