6 homes with striking cladding solutions

Effective cladding choices can turn an otherwise simple house into a statement home. As the skin of the house, it’s the exterior element that does most of the heavy lifting in communicating the design of the building.

Here are six homes with striking cladding solutions to inspire your next design.

Striking cladding doesn’t have to be expensive; a point well proven by the Red House. Designed by Crosson Architects, the corrugated-iron cladding on this home has been painted a rich shade of red to make it stand out from its bush surroundings. 

Black window and door joinery completes the exterior’s two-tone palette, creating bold contrast with relatively few elements.

The iron sheets are sometimes placed at intersecting angles, which creates new patterns and breaks up what would be an otherwise uniform face of vertical lines.

A huge metal-clad wedge protruding from the upper levels of this Pauanui Home makes it seem as though the bow of a ship is bursting through the property.

The wedge is clad in Cabernet Sauvignon EuraMica from Ambro Metals, a material with a unique colour trick; its dual-tone finish contains “mica” pigments which refract and reflect light in a shimmering and enchanting way.

The shiny wedge is allowed to take centre stage with the rest of the house being clad in a complementary yet understated Authentic Grey Premium Coil Coated Aluminium, also from Ambro Metals.

Sometimes it’s not the individual cladding materials themselves that necessarily make a cladding solution striking; it’s the way they’re combined together to make the overall impression of the house.

This Pottsville Home by Abodo is a perfect example. 

Its walls bear nothing particularly exotic: monolithic white cladding, brushed grey steel, stone and thermally modified New Zealand plantation timber in random-width weatherboards. But the contrasts in texture, colour and finish when they’re all used together make for a compelling and modern cladding solution.

Contrast is one of the most effective ways to create a striking look. The Black Gables house by JMAC Architecture relies on only two colours, black and white, to create its eye-catching aesthetic.

What’s interesting about this home is that both the walls and roof are clad in the same material, Ebony Black Solar-Rib Cladding, giving the two-gable pavilion design a solid base from which the areas of white cladding (not to mention the white interior) can stand out. 

With new colours, classic materials can take on new looks. Waireka Place by Artz Architectural Builders is clad in an ash-black colour cedar. That colour, alongside the aluminum highlights around the building’s edges, the pine soffits and the angled roof, creates a modern and sophisticated look.

Black clay brick, timber, and rust-bronze steel combine in this McCormacks Bay House to create a simple and elegant cladding solution.

Designed by Chaplin Crooks Architects, the home was constructed after the owner’s previous house was damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes. While the new home has a similar floor plan to the old one, the new cladding choice helps pull the design into the modern era.

For more cladding inspiration, browse through Archipro’s huge range of Projects and cladding products.