Custom Metal Partitions & Steel-Framed Glass Dividers in Vancouver

A partition divides a room without closing it. That is the whole idea: you get separation, a bit of acoustic softening and a defined edge, while the light that used to reach the back of the room still gets there. We fabricate them in steel, in our North Vancouver shop, built to the opening you actually have rather than to a system size that nearly fits. Steel-framed glass is the version most people picture, but a partition can just as easily be slatted, gridded, solid or a decorative cut panel.

Where a Partition Earns Its Place

The Same Thing, Under Several Names

People arrive here using very different words for what is broadly one design language. Steel-framed glass partition. Steel and glass divider. Interior glass partition. Metal room divider. Black metal and glass wall, which is what most people say when they are describing a photo rather than naming a product.

Crittall comes up often too. Crittall is a British manufacturer, a real one, with its own steel window and door systems. Over the last decade the name has drifted into shorthand for the look itself, a slim black steel frame divided into multiple lites. We are not a Crittall dealer and we do not supply their products. What we build is a welded steel frame, made in our own shop to your opening.

None of this changes the fabrication. What changes it is the opening, how the frame is divided, and how it is finished.

The most common request we get is the one between a kitchen and a living room in an open-plan house. The open plan was the whole point when the house was built, and then somebody starts working from home, or the cooking smells travel, or the room simply feels like a corridor with furniture in it. A steel-framed glass partition puts an edge back without taking the light.

After that it is entryways, where a partition turns a door that opens straight into the living room into a proper arrival. Home offices, where a glazed wall gives you a door to close and a room your family can still see into. Restaurants, where booth-height dividers do more for the feel of a room than any amount of furniture. Retail, where a screen defines a fitting area or a service counter. And offices, where a glazed front makes a meeting room out of a corner without building a stud wall and losing the borrowed light.

Partition Design Catalogue

Twelve designs, each with a model number. Filter by type and by whether you are working on a home or a commercial space, then send the model number straight into a quote request. None of these are fixed products. They are starting points, and almost everything we build is a variation on one of them worked to a particular opening.

Ways We Build a Partition

• Steel and glass. A welded steel frame with glazed openings. Divided into many lites for the classic look, or into as few as possible when you want the glass to disappear.
• Slatted and fin. Vertical or horizontal steel members with air between them. You see through it at an angle and not at all straight on, which is often exactly what a stairwell or entry needs.
• Open grid. A welded grid with nothing in it. Pure structure, and the cheapest way to describe a boundary without blocking anything.
• Solid panel. Steel sheet in a frame, usually broken up with recessed shadow gaps so it reads as panels rather than a wall.
• Perforated. Perforated sheet set into a steel frame. The hole size and spacing decide how much you see through, and it changes completely depending on where you stand.
• Decorative cut panels. A pattern cut into sheet and framed in steel. This is where a partition stops being a divider and becomes the thing people notice in the room.

Choosing Glass Without Reading a Spec Sheet

Most of the decision is about how much you want to see through. Clear glass gives you the full view and the most light, and it is what people usually want between a kitchen and a living room. Reeded or fluted glass distorts shapes while still passing light, which is why it turns up in ensuites and entries where you want the brightness but not the audience. Frosted goes further and gives you a lit panel rather than a view.

Glass near a floor is a safety glazing question, and it is one your municipality will have a view on. We confirm the glazing requirements for your specific project rather than assuming. If you want the technical side, our how steel-framed glass is built page goes into frame profiles, glass types and the fabrication sequence in detail.

Why Welded Steel Instead of an Aluminium System

There are modular aluminium partition systems that produce a similar look for less money, and if a standard size fits your opening they are a reasonable answer. Two things separate a welded steel partition from one.

The first is the frame itself. Welded steel can create slimmer, more architectural sightlines than many standard framed partition systems, and a welded and ground corner reads as a single continuous member rather than two pieces meeting at a joint. In a room where the frame is the design, that difference is most of the effect you are paying for.

The second is that a system comes in system sizes. Ours is cut to your opening, which matters more than it sounds in Vancouver, where a lot of the houses and older strata units this work goes into are not square. See our steel and stainless steel pages for how the material choice plays into it.

Fixing to Floor, Ceiling and Walls

A partition is only as good as what holds it up, and that depends entirely on what is behind the finishes. Wood-framed walls, concrete and steel all want different fixings, and what is available at the ceiling is not always what you would choose. We look at this on site before anything is drawn, because it occasionally changes the design.

The other thing we check is how square the opening is. Older East Vancouver houses and a lot of the strata stock are out by enough that a frame built to the drawing would leave a visible taper against the wall. That is normal and it is solvable, but it is solved by scribing the frame to the actual opening, which is a reason to measure rather than to assume. Where the fixing conditions turn out to be more than we can properly assess, we say so rather than guessing.

Finishes for Interior Metalwork

Powder coat is the usual answer indoors, in any RAL colour, and matte black is what most people picture when they picture a steel partition. Blackened steel and patina are both available and both look better in person than in a photograph, with the caveat that they are living finishes: on a surface people touch daily they will wear back at the contact points, which some clients love and some do not. Our finishes guide shows what each one actually looks like and where each belongs.

What a Partition Will Not Do

This is the section we would rather you read than skip, because it prevents the two disappointments that come up most.

A partition is not a sound wall. A single-glazed steel frame is a sightline device. It will soften a room and take the edge off conversation carrying, and it will not stop a television, a dishwasher or a conference call the way a built stud wall would. Anyone quoting you a partition as an acoustic solution is overselling it.

A partition is also not a structural element and not a fire separation. It divides space. If your project needs a rated assembly, a load-bearing element, or anything an engineer has to sign, that is a different scope and a different trade, and we will tell you so at the consultation rather than after the drawings.

How the Job Runs

It starts with a free in-house consultation, on site or in the shop, where we look at the opening and talk about what the room is actually for. Then a site measure, then drawings for you to approve. Fabrication happens in our shop: frame welded, joints ground, then finished. Glass is measured last and ordered against the finished frame rather than the drawing, because the frame is the thing that has to be right and the glass is the thing that has to fit it.

Installation and fabrication can be coordinated together as part of the project scope, or we can fabricate and hand off to your installer or contractor. Both are normal. See installation and welding for how those parts of the work run.

Residential, Restaurant and Office Work

Residentially, most of what we build is one partition doing one job in a room the client already lives in, which means access, dust and how long the space is unusable matter as much as the design. We plan around that.

Restaurant and hospitality work is usually about zoning a room so it feels smaller and more considered without losing seats, and it usually runs to a schedule that is not negotiable. Retail is similar, with the added question of what the partition looks like from the street.

Where a room needs visual zoning but not a full glazed wall, a freestanding or ceiling-hung pattern panel from our decorative screen systems does the lighter version of the same job.

Office work tends to come through a designer or a contractor and tends to be about borrowing light from a perimeter window into a room that has none. If you are specifying on behalf of a client, our pages for interior designers and architects cover how we work with drawings and samples. Where the same look needs to continue outdoors onto a patio or balcony, that is our exterior privacy and architectural screens instead.

Partition Questions We Get Asked

Do I need a permit or strata approval?

It depends on your building and what you are doing. A non-structural interior partition is a different proposition in a detached house than in a strata unit, where your strata council may want to review anything fixed to the structure regardless of what the city thinks. We are not able to tell you what your building will require, and we would be wary of anyone who says they can without looking. What we will do is give you drawings that show exactly what is being fixed and where, which is what a strata or a building department will ask for.

Can you fit one into an existing opening?

Usually, and that is most of what we do. The frame is built to the opening rather than the other way round. What we need to know early is what the opening is made of, because a partition fixed into wood framing, concrete and steel are three different details.

How much noise will it actually stop?

Less than you want it to. See the section above. A glazed partition changes how a room sounds and it does not soundproof it. If noise is the actual problem you are solving, tell us at the consultation, because a partition may not be the right answer and we would rather say so.

Can it match our existing windows or doors?

Often, and it is a fair question to ask early because it affects the frame design. The finish side of matching is covered on our glass and metal page, which deals with matching metalwork to existing frames.

What Moves the Number on a Partition Quote

We do not publish a price range for partitions. The number is set almost entirely by the specific opening, and any average we printed would be wrong for most of the people reading it. What follows is what actually moves it.

• Overall size. The width and height of the opening, and whether the partition runs to the ceiling or stops short. Larger spans need heavier frame members, which changes both material and handling.
• How many divisions. The one people least expect. Two partitions of the same size, one with four lites and one with twenty, are very different jobs. Every division is more cutting, fitting, squaring and welding.
• Whether glass is involved. Glazed designs cost more than open slatted or grid ones, and the glass specification shifts the figure again. The technical side of that lives on our glass and metal page rather than here.
• Decorative complexity. A plain rectilinear grid is the baseline. Arched or curved heads, offset non-repeating grids and cut patterns all add design and fabrication time. Where a design calls for cut or perforated panel work, that is arranged through a specialist rather than carried out in our own shop.
• Finish. Powder coat, blackened steel and patina are not equivalent in cost or in preparation. The options are set out on our finishes page.
• Site conditions and installation. Whether the opening is square, what the fixings can land in, whether existing floor and ceiling finishes have to be worked around, and how much access there is to get a welded frame into the room.

It is also why we ask for a photo and rough dimensions before quoting. Those two things settle most of the list above.

Get a Price on Your Partition

Send us the opening dimensions, a photo taken square-on from the room you would be looking from, and the model number of anything in the catalogue that is close. We will come back with what is possible in that opening and what it takes to get there. Consultation is free and there is no obligation.