Design Guide
Choosing A Finish For Coffin Hardware
Gold, nickel, antique brass, antique copper, chrome and vacuum metallized tones — how to choose a finish and how to keep it consistent across re-orders.
Written by the production team at Virtue Hardware Co., Ltd, Wenzhou.
Overview
The Finish Does Most Of The Visual Work
Two factories can cast the same shape and ship fittings that look nothing like each other, because the finish is what the customer actually sees. Choosing a finish is therefore less about picking a name from a list and more about agreeing a physical reference that can be held across repeat orders.
Metal Finishes
Plated Finishes On Cast And Steel Parts
| Gold plated (GP) | The traditional choice on wooden coffins. Warm and bright, reads well against dark stained timber. |
|---|---|
| Nickel plated (NP) | Cool silver tone. Common on modern and lighter coffin finishes. |
| Antique brass (AB) | Darkened brass with the raised detail left bright. Suits ornate castings, because the antiquing is what makes the detail read. |
| Antique copper (AC) | Warmer and redder than antique brass, same principle. |
| Chrome plated | Hard bright silver. Used on selected models where a cooler modern look is wanted. |
Plastic Finishes
Vacuum Metallized And Coated Tones
Plastic parts are vacuum metallized then colour coated. The available tones are gold, silver, copper and bronze, and some ABS parts can also be taken to antique brass or antique copper so that a plastic ornament can sit next to plated metal without an obvious mismatch.
A coated finish behaves differently from a plated one. It is thinner, it is less resistant to abrasion, and it should be handled by the body of the part rather than dragged across a bench.
Matching
How To Keep A Tone Consistent Across Re-orders
- Agree the tone against a physical sample, not a colour name. "Antique brass" is a family, not a colour.
- Keep one approved reference piece on your side and let us keep the matching one on ours.
- Order all of the fittings for one coffin range together where you can, so they run in the same plating batch.
- Tell us if a re-order has to match stock you already hold, and say which order it came from.
- Where a coffin carries both plated metal and metallized plastic, approve them together rather than separately.
None of this is complicated, but skipping it is the single most common reason a re-order arrives technically correct and still unusable.
Related Products
Ranges Covered By This Guide
Metal Handle
94 references
Plastic Handle
41 references
Metal Crucifix & Fittings
56 references
Handle Set
12 referencesTake the catalogue with you
Range catalogues with images and specifications, as PDFs.
More Guides
Related Reading
Questions
Questions About This Topic
What finishes do you offer?
Will a re-order match my existing stock?
Is antique brass a single colour?
Can plastic and metal parts be matched?
Next Step
Still Not Sure Which Reference To Order
Send a photograph of what you are trying to match, or tell us what the coffin has to do. A technical answer is usually faster than another article.
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