Artisan-Style Three-Coat System Makes Waves in the Architecture Field
Dura Industries, reputable color developer and applicator of liquid PVDF and powder coatings, teamed up with Valspar, frontrunner in the international coil and extrusion architectural coatings industry and part of Sherwin-Williams Extrusion Coatings, to create and coat the renowned façade of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. For this specific project, Dura Industries implemented a hand-painted five-coat system for the first time in the company’s history. What resulted after project completion, apart from the phenomenal structure, was the development of an Artisan style coating using a Dura three-coat system.
To achieve the desired shade for the new museum, 3,600 metal wall panels were hand-coated by Dura’s production team. The metal wall panels were coated with a five-coat system – two layers of primer and three of the coating itself, achieving the envisioned hue of copper. Valspar provided multiple custom colors of its Fluropon® exterior architectural coating which were then mixed to the desired shades to achieve what would eventually be known as the Artisan 3.5 coating. Dura first developed 4 colors from which the Smithsonian design team selected African Sunrise. African Sunrise became the base color from which Dura then added other Valspar blending base colors to achieve the right shading effect when applied over a barrier coat in a standard shade of Black.