Design
Finish codes: how a cabin is specified without a mood board
Technical and aesthetic criteria for defining materials, finishes and configurations that fit the language of the project.
2 min read
A cabin is the one part of an elevator that everybody sees and nobody specifies properly. It gets described: warm, brushed, not too shiny, something like the lobby. Then it arrives, and it is a different steel, a different grain and a different marble, and nobody can point to the document that says otherwise.
Every surface is a family
The cabin is not one decision, it is five, and each one has its own code family. Specifying by code turns a conversation into a document.
| Family | Surface | Typical finishes |
|---|---|---|
| G1 | Ceiling | Mirror stainless with LED, hairline stainless with LED |
| G2 | Car operating panel | Hairline stainless, full height integrated |
| G3 / FT | Floor | Marble, stone tile |
| G4 | Car wall | Hairline, mirror, mirror etching, film laminated steel |
| G6 | Handrail | Hairline stainless, round and flat sections |
The car opens into a lobby
This is the reason the cabin belongs in the interior package and not in the equipment package. The doors open and, for a few seconds, the car and the lobby are one room. If the lobby is warm stone and the car is mirror steel, the building reads as two projects. Specifying them at the same time, with codes on both sides, is what keeps them one.
What a code protects
- It survives the tender: three suppliers quoting the same code are quoting the same surface.
- It survives the substitution: a change is visible as a different code, not hidden in a word like similar.
- It survives the handover: the maintenance team can replace a damaged panel with the panel that was there.
- It survives the second building: the same codes give the same car in phase two, years later.
The configurator on the home page returns the codes for the ceiling, the car wall and the floor of whatever combination you choose. That list, not an adjective, is what goes into the specification.
