Articles: Rainscreen Cladding

Rainscreen cladding is a popular contemporary cladding solution. When fitting the boards you are usually looking to form a grid with a straight seam which gives a uniform look to your cladding.

If you are looking to clad a home office in your garden or a garage rainscreen cladding could be exactly what you need. Like all cladding, Rainscreen forms a protective barrier for the interior wall from the elements. You can help the cladding protect the interior wall of your building by fitting a breathable membrane behind it, this forms an air flow behind the cladding so that mould doesn’t form behind it.

Rainscreen is machined to a profile (Our IWC8) which is in the shape of a slanted rectangle with a chamfer on either end. The boards sit on top of each other and we recommend that you leave a 12mm gap between the boards on the front face.

As a profile IWC8 looks better when applied in a regimented pattern which makes it look more modern than a feather or waney edge cladding. Another advantage of Rainshield is that it is the cheapest of all our machined products. It may not have the same security as tongue and groove or shiplap but it is still more than adequate.

Fixing and Treating Rainscreen Cladding

All of our timber is supplied untreated, so you will need to treat your cladding yourself. You can either treat the boards to just stop moisture movement or apply UV protection as well. If you just treat your boards for moisture movement, they will turn silvery grey, whereas the UV protection will help to keep the original colour for longer.

Rainscreen boards are designed for horizontal fitting and we recommend predrilling any holes in the timber to help avoid splitting the wood.

To start, with fit a breathable membrane to the interior wall to help with airflow behind the timber and then fix softwood battens vertically to the wall. The battens are what you will fix your cladding boards to (we recommend a 400mm or 600mm gap between each batten). You can then fit your boards to the wall starting from the bottom and working your way up.