Explore Our Innovative Balustrade Options

It’s been 30 years since our first launch as a balustrading company, and over these years, balustrading choices for balconies have changed significantly. Ten years ago, the most dominant selection of balcony balustrades was the framed balustrade systems. However, the evolution of frameless balustrades took the construction industry by storm and was a massive hit in the market.

At Sapphire, innovation has been an inherent part of our lives. Over the years, we have created a lot of successful balustrade styles with intricate detailing, bars that make an optical illusion, rotated vertical bars and more.

We constantly look for ways to challenge ourselves; we innovate new balcony balustrade designs using different extruded railings and sublimation printing on aluminium panels.

Different Types of Balustrades Options:

Structural Glass:

Frameless structural glass provides an uninterrupted view from the balcony, making it the most preferred option for balcony railings. Decorative glass can also be used to create effects, introduce privacy, or prevent wind on balconies.

The different types of structured glass balustrades we offer are clear toughened laminated with or without heat soaked, obscure toughened with or without heat soaked.

Also, it is to be noted that laminate glass is banned, and monolithic glass is banned under regulation 7 in the UK.

Our Hayes Village project is a perfect example of printed pattern glass balustrades.

Vertical Bars:

Vertical bars for balustrades were a cheaper choice for guarding children against climbing. However, vertical bars became a less common choice with the significantly reduced glass cost.
Vertical bars create distinction and architectural style to the balconies. The different choices we offer with vertical bars are rectangle, flange in, flange out, rotated on plan bars, T Bars, and mixed variants.

One pro-tip when picking bar balustrades: always go for vertical bars; round bars are expensive compared to vertical bars.

Modular Panel Balustrade:

Regarding end-user balcony usability, privacy screens are a vital requirement. Hence the evolution of modular panel balustrade. Aluminium sheets are used for making solid panels.

These balustrades come with different choices, including perforated, sublimation printing, and solid panels.

How to customise balustrades cost-effectively

Simplification and standardisation have a significant role in reducing costs throughout construction from design to finished project.

Cost reduction does not mean you must sacrifice some essential features to hit budgets. By being aware of where costs escalate in design and embracing standard sizing and repetition where practical, prices can be clinically cut whilst still achieving a high-quality product.

Playing with Colours/Patterns

When designing your balconies, you have the option to mix the colours and create a balustrade of your choice.

Using printed patterns on powder-coated panels makes your balcony balustrading aesthetically pleasing—for instance, you can create wood effects on the balcony.

Fancy designs are much more cost-effective than adding tiles—one perfect example is our project at Willmott Dixon at Barking and Pitman Tozer.