Designs Featuring Hot Rolled Steel

Design by ColePrevost

Following in the footsteps of concrete and stainless steel, other materials once considered industrial are becoming more accepted for use in our homes. The next wave includes a throw back to the iron age called hot rolled steel. Also known as black steel, hot rolled isn’t shiny like stainless and doesn’t get painted like cold rolled steel, which is used to build cars and washing machines. Bold architects and brave homeowners are now looking at funky, chunky sheets of this dark metal and finding new places where it looks right at home.

Without getting into a mind numbing discussion on metallurgy, hot rolled steel is rolled into sheets while it's still hot. From the manufacturers the gun metal gray material is coiled up and shipped out to a steel processors. As the steel is transported, cut into sheets, and bent into usable forms patterns develop from moisture in the atmosphere which give each piece a unique look. Designers often search through stacks of material to find just the right piece.

“It has a beautiful richness,” says architect Robert Cole of Cole-Prevost in Washington, DC. “and it’s surprising because it’s so warm.” The warmth comes from the material’s ability to reflect light in muted tones. Black steel’s smooth, dense, texture also invites touch, making it a desirable finish material. “It has a feel not unlike honed stone,” says Cole, “it’s a softness that I find very compelling.”

Image Courtesy of Washington Design Center

Cole’s firm has designed and built two rooms in show homes (seen above and below) featuring the material as floor and wall panels. He’s also used it in real houses as fireplace surrounds, exterior gates, wall sheathing, and wrapped a wall with it in a recently completed artist studio. “It was his idea,” says Madeleine Keesing, a painter in Washington, DC, I’d love to take credit for it, but I can’t.” In addition to serving as an unconventional design element the steel wall also provides a function that you can’t get with stainless. “I use little tiny magnets to hold paintings up, it serves the purpose beautifully,” says Keesing.

Besides sheets, the metal is also be processed into angled rails, flat stock, tubes and hollow squares. These shapes were especially interesting to Architect Janet Bloomberg of Kube Architecture in Washington, DC. Bloomberg works the very modern looking material into an environment where you wouldn’t expect to see it, turn of the century row houses. “We feel it’s a very timeless material, the forms are simple, clean and square. It has a purity to it,” says Bloomberg.

Black steel is strong enough to be used as a structural element and is often left exposed. Bloomberg has employed it as support columns and as framing around interior doors. “We use it as flat bar,” says Bloomberg, “we frame things with it and use it as a framing system that mimics trim. It’s like crown molding or a chair rail.” Kube also likes to use it for exposed structural elements like staircases, as seen below.

Design by Kube Architecture

A Kube designed master suite addition in Lamar Whitman’s house in Northwest DC features exposed black steel wrapping around closet doors in the master bedroom. An idea that the homeowner had to be sold on – but it didn’t take much convincing. “It was all Janet’s idea,” says Lamar Whitman a policy manager for a technical association. “We hadn’t seen it before but we wanted a very modern look – it’s very distinctive.”

Both Robert Cole and Janet Bloomberg site modern-era architectural heavyweights including Frank Lloyd Wright as pioneers of hot rolled steel. Used as an interior finish or as part of the structure, maintenance is practically zero. A coat of light oil protects the material from rust, its only enemy. A clear polyester based finish or a wax can also be brushed or sprayed on if the metal is likely to get wet.

As a material, hot rolled steel is not that expensive, it’s sold in 4’ x 8’ sheets like plywood and goes for about $70 a sheet. It can be welded or attached using screws, bolts, or glue. Sheets are typically attached to a substrate of plywood or drywall. Steel is measured in thickness by gauge and designers prefer working with black steel that’s between 12 and 16 gauge which is comparable to 1/8” to 1/16” thick.

For a modern update on tradition or a pure contemporary vision look for black steel as another industrial staple that’s becoming a residential trend. “It’s a classic material yet also a modern material,” says Janet Bloomberg. and I love to wrap spaces with it.”

Image Courtesy of Hoachlander Davis Photography

If your design point of view leans towards architecture and interior design using hot rolled steel, welcome to the cutting edge. Hot rolled, or black steel is a readily available material. For suppliers in your area, look for steel fabricators, suppliers or distributors.

Text and images originally appeared in the July, 2006 issue of ChesapeakeHome Magazine.