Curtain walling for offices and flagship retail.

What curtain walling actually is.

The phrase "curtain wall" means a non-loadbearing external wall — in other words, a facade system that hangs off the building's structure rather than supporting it. In practice, on commercial premises in the UK, that almost always means a grid of aluminium mullions and transoms holding insulated glass units in place. Think of the glazed frontages on modern offices, gym facades, restaurant fronts and shopping-centre anchor tenants — that's curtain walling.

Stick-built vs unitised.

Stick-built systems are assembled on site piece-by-piece: mullions go up first, then transoms, then glass units are glazed in. It's the right call for smaller and mid-sized facades, and it gives you flexibility on awkward sites. The downside is it's slower and more weather-dependent.

Unitised systems are pre-assembled in the factory as panels (typically floor-to-floor, one structural bay wide) and craned into place on site. Much faster, much less site labour, and perfect for tower blocks and larger commercial buildings — but it requires early design freeze and craneage access.

Thermal performance.

All our curtain walling is thermally broken using polyamide isolators between inner and outer aluminium profiles. With a good double- or triple-glazed IGU specification we can hit U-values down to 1.0 W/m²K, comfortably exceeding current Part L requirements. Solar-control low-E coatings are standard on south-facing elevations.

Project-based.

Curtain walling projects are never off-the-shelf — every install gets its own design package, structural calculations, and CWCT-compliant weather test sign-off. Contact us with drawings (or just a set of dimensions) and we'll quote the package.