11 modern exterior cladding ideas to inspire your next project

If you're building a new home, working on a commercial project, or just exploring different options, there are many modern exterior cladding ideas that you can learn from. We've chosen eleven of these, each of them unique and appealing. These cladding choices are varied and can fit residential, commercial, or even buildings that serve both purposes. Regardless of what you're working on, this collection can offer helpful ideas and inspire your own creative instincts.

Celebrated for its sleek, contemporary design, single lock cladding, often referred to as standing seam cladding, incorporates functionality with high design. The system boasts a unique design with concealed clips and fasteners, leading to a streamlined and visually pleasing exterior.

What's more, the fast, easy snap-together seams not only expedite installation but also ensure a watertight seal, making the cladding well-suited for areas with lots of rainfall and temperature extremes. The result is a striking and robust façade that requires minimal maintenance while promising an impressive lifespan of over 50 years.

An added benefit is the enhanced insulation properties it brings to a building, increasing energy efficiency and providing comfortable indoor temperatures all year round. This versatile cladding can be used for residential exteriors, as well as commercial buildings and for smaller outdoor projects such as for covering porches and other structures such as sheds and carports.

Related article: The most cost effective types of cladding in Australia

Natural stone cladding is another exciting option to consider. Its raw, natural beauty and varied shapes make it an excellent way to add character to a home's exterior. The stones come with pre-shaped corners, which ensure a neat and complete look. For a more traditional feel, you can have the stones fitted closely together for a sleek look or with small gaps - called grout joints.

While it has a classic style to it, natural stone cladding can be utilised in a variety of modern styles. For example, its often used in conjunction with other cladding on a home's exterior, such as timber weatherboards or a type of metal cladding. You'll often see stone wall cladding utilised in both rural and coastal homes across Australia. However, you'll also sometimes see it used on a home's exterior, mainly homes built to fit a traditional, historical style.

This type of cladding is also perfect for various outdoor uses, including feature walls, façades, pillars, outdoor kitchens and showers, patios, and garden features.

An Australian classic, weatherboard cladding (often made from timber, sometimes vinyl) is prominent in modern home designs due to its blend of good looks and functionality. Its charming look seamlessly uplifts the home's façade, while the robust and weather-resistant nature ensures resilience and an extended lifespan, making it a practical solution for dynamic weather conditions.

The unique charm of weatherboards enhances a home's exterior, providing a timeless appeal while its natural insulating properties maintain indoor temperatures year-round. Its composition works as a natural thermal barrier - wood has tiny air pockets within its cellular structure that slow heat transfer, helping homes stay warmer in winter and cooler in summer.

What's more, weatherboard panels are crafted predominantly from reclaimed or sustainably sourced timber, so it's an eco-friendly solution, and timber's inherent porous nature allows moisture to pass through it helping to reduce dampness and mould.

Related article: Weatherboard vs brick: a look at the pros and cons of each

Brick cladding brings an unbeatable blend of timeless style and practical benefits, especially for external applications. It's known for its sturdiness and longevity and its ability to stand firm against harsh weather conditions, including extreme heat, heavy rains, high winds and fires.

Its robust nature also offers excellent insulation properties, keeping homes cool in summer and warm in winter, leading to energy efficiency and cost savings on heating and cooling.

Beyond its functional advantages, brick cladding is versatile in terms of design. It's a popular exterior cladding choice for modern townhouses, federation-style homes, beach houses, extensions, and renovations. Its design, application versatility, and practical benefits make brick cladding an excellent choice for homes and unique commercial spaces across Australia.

Aluminium cassette cladding offers a unique cladding solution, designed with commercial buildings in mind. These large format panels are not only visually pleasing but also possess high durability and impressive impact resistance.

One of the distinctive characteristics of these aluminium cassette cladding panels is their notable flexibility. They can be manipulated into curves, rolls, and even perforations, catering to a broad spectrum of architectural styles. To enhance their resilience, each panel is finished with a PVDF resin-based coating. This coating helps give the panels better resistance to diverse weather conditions and industrial pollutants.

A feature of these aluminium cladding panels that sets them apart is the option to incorporate bespoke graphics. This capability allows businesses to display their unique branding directly on the panels, turning the structure into a personalised architectural representation of the company's brand.

Brick veneer is of course very similar in its appearance to genuine brick; but with some subtle differences. Brick veneer is composed of slender 'faces' or slices of brick, which replicate the aesthetic of a full brick wall when adhered to an exterior. Given their thinness, they are considerably lighter, hence demanding less structural support compared to a complete brick wall. This lightness also facilitates easy installation on various exterior walls.

The cladding design also helps with keeping a house warm. Brick veneer's construction involves attaching thin brick slices to an exterior wall, creating a gap between the veneer and the actual structure of the house. This gap can be filled with insulation materials, forming an effective thermal barrier.

Like brick, brick veneer cladding can be applied in many exterior settings. You'll often see it used as an external face for modern townhouses, apartments and older houses that have been built traditionally with brick but have been renovated with a brick veneer.

Related article: 7 popular types of cladding in Australia

Fixed batten cladding is a simple yet effective exterior cladding solution for creating dynamic and visually engaging exteriors. This cladding type incorporates timber or metal battens affixed to the exterior wall, creating a play of shadows and depth that adds a contemporary touch to a building's exterior. In the images below, you can see fixed batten cladding constructed from aluminium styled to resemble timber.

The distance between battens can be modified to cater to various visual effects and ventilation requirements. Tighter batten spacing can give a solid look, while broader spacing offers a stylised, geometric appeal. This feature grants a high level of design customisation, allowing homeowners and architects to form eye-catching exterior patterns.

Thanks to its design, fixed batten cladding promotes passive ventilation, making it suitable for warmer climates. It's an excellent choice for homes, notably beach houses, while it can add a striking touch to commercial buildings. This cladding allows architects and homeowners to achieve the look of natural timber in a lightweight, sustainable aluminium form.

Fibre cement boards offer a durable and versatile exterior commercial cladding solution. Manufactured from a composite of sand, cement, and cellulose fibres, fibre cement cladding is highly resistant to fire, moisture, rot, and termites. The cladding's resistance to graffiti, scratches, and impacts further enhances its longevity while also requiring minimal upkeep.

These boards can be conveniently cut to size and installed on-site, with various sheet sizes available. The through-coloured material maintains a consistent look, and the range of profiles, including Classic, Raw, Hewn, Groove, Infuse, and Depth, cater to various architectural styles.

Its environmental friendliness, resulting from the ventilated sub-construction system that improves thermal and energy efficiency, and the long life expectancy exceeding 50 years are other factors that make fibre cement cladding a long-lasting, practical and appealing choice for commercial exteriors.

Roll-formed steel cladding made by shaping steel sheets into various profiles offers strong resistance to damage and many robust qualities. Steel's inherent strength and rigidity help it resist physical impacts and environmental stressors, including intense UV rays, preventing deformations and prolonging the material's lifespan.

It stands up to cracking and warping as steel doesn't swell or shrink with temperature fluctuations. Also, the protective coatings applied during manufacturing shield the colour from UV radiation, preventing fading.

Thanks to its resilience against cracking, fading, warping, and rust, it reduces the need for regular repairs, repainting, or treatments. On the customisation front, steel's malleability allows it to be moulded into various profiles, and surface treatments offer a wide range of colours and finishes.

You may not be familiar with the term 'perforated sheet cladding', but you've likely seen it adorning various homes, libraries, train stations, and other public structures. Perforated cladding is a specific type of exterior finish for buildings, comprising panels frequently made from metal or composite materials.

Strategically placed holes or openings mark these panels, hence the term "perforated." The size, shape, and layout of these holes can vary significantly. The design specifics of these perforations - their size, shape, and arrangement - are typically collaborative decisions made by the client, architect, and supplier.

Not only do these perforations add a unique visual element, but they also serve functional purposes. For instance, they can facilitate ventilation, allowing air to flow while shielding the building from harsh weather. Additionally, they can help diffuse sunlight, effectively reducing glare and heat indoors. Perforated cladding's unique design is one compelling reason for its consideration. It introduces an intriguing play of light and shadow, delivering a distinct visual identity upon a building.

Bluestone, a dense, hard natural stone, is a type of basalt renowned for its unique blue-grey hue. As a cladding material, bluestone guarantees uniqueness; every piece is different, promising a genuinely distinctive exterior look for a building that uses this type of cladding.

Bluestone is not just attractive but also resilient. It ranks among the hardest natural stones, making it highly resistant to environmental stressors. This robustness ensures the material is virtually maintenance-free. Its beautiful colour, derived from its natural mineral composition, remains steadfast over time, eliminating the need for frequent touch-ups.

Bluestone's strength protects against threats like rot and rodent infestations, safeguarding the building's structural integrity. Its natural beauty, exceptional durability, and unique character make it a worthy choice for any project. Whether for a residential home, a commercial property, or a public edifice, bluestone cladding is an intriguing choice and adds a lasting unique feel and charm.

As you can see, there are plenty of modern cladding options available today. This collection has hopefully introduced you to new contemporary cladding choices while showing how traditional favourites can be rejuvenated with fresh concepts and ideas, and you can now be certain that there's a cladding option that can truly transform your home or building.

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