Balustrades — the 7 types and 5 component toggles
Balustrades — handrails, pool fences, deck railings, stair rails — are notoriously hard to quote. Every one is slightly different, and the surface area is deceptively large once you count every spindle and rail. Surfacely gives you a structured way in.
The 7 balustrade types
- Timber spindles — square or round vertical spindles with top and bottom rails
- Colonial / turned — decorative shaped spindles, slower to paint per spindle
- Solid panel — infill panels between posts, no spindles
- Glass + timber — glass infill with painted timber frame (no spindles to paint)
- Wire / cable — wire balustrading, only posts and top rail painted
- Handrail only — just the rail itself, no other painted components
- Horizontal rails — horizontal rails running between posts instead of vertical spindles
Changing the type resets the component toggles to sensible defaults for that style. Your dimensions are preserved.
The 5 component toggles
For any type you can turn components on or off, depending on what actually needs painting:
- Top rail
- Bottom rail
- Spindles or panel
- Posts
- Middle rails
Dimensions you enter (height, length, spindle count, post dimensions) are in metric — Surfacely displays and accepts values in m as appropriate for your locale. Roof pitch picker is used for sloped balustrades (stair rails) to get the real run length.
Carry-forward
If the next balustrade on the same building is similar, Surfacely carries forward the component configuration from the previous one — you just update the dimensions.
Why it matters: a typical two-storey deck balustrade can have 40+ spindles, each painted top and bottom. Ballparking it loses money. Components-based pricing charges the real hours and wins quotes when clients compare against less rigorous quotes that inflate the number to be safe.
If you paint a lot of one balustrade style (pool fences, for example), save it as a custom surface template. Your next pool fence is one tap.