Colourfast facade boards: how is colour fastness measured?

When you’re using cladding boards for your building, you of course want to be sure that you can enjoy a beautiful result for as long as possible. Durable facade boards should be firesafe, dimensionally stable and resistant to external weather influences. Rockpanel cladding ticks all these boxes! But there’s more: Rockpanel facade boards are also the perfect choice when you’re looking for colourfast facade boards. We’ll explain everything about how the colour fastness of facade boards is measured. 

The classification method that Rockpanel uses for measuring the colourfastness of the facade boards is the ISO 105 A02. This grey scale determines the colour change of product samples. The scale ranges from 1 (significant variation – the worst rating) to 5 (no variation – the best rating). 

But how does this test work? Of course, we want to offer the best quality for decades long, but it would take too long to wait multiple years for the real-life test results. That’s why we use the results of a weathering test of 3000 and 5000 hours. This represents the weathering on a vertical south-facing facade. 

For this purpose, small samples of our boards are tested in artificial weathering equipment. With very strong Xenon lamps, we simulate intense, non-stop UV radiation. After 3000 and 5000 hours, the colour variation of the samples is tested via a measuring device, ensuring the most objective and accurate measurements.  

Many other producers of cladding boards only provide results of colour fastness tests after 3000 hours, so it’s important to have a look at the period used when comparing results. 

All Rockpanel boards score very well on colourfastness. Rockpanel board material is finished with a layer of high-performing water-based coating, which protects them against UV radiation, dirt and weather influences, ensuring optimum colourfastness. This means the colours of the boards will stay beautiful for a very long time and only a minimum of maintenance is required. Our facade boards without an extra ProtectPlus coating already have scores of 3-4 or better (after 5000 hours) on the grey scale of ISO 105 A02. 

Our ProtectPlus coating, which comes as a standard for the products in our Woods, Stones, Metals* and Premium range, improves the self-cleaning capacity and colourfastness of the facade boards even further. After 5000 hours, they all have scores of 4 or better. 

* Rockpanel Metals White Aluminium and Grey Aluminium do not have a ProtectPlus coating.