Brass Color: What Brass Is, and What a Real Brass Finish Looks Like

Brass color is a warm, light gold. Brass is yellower than bronze and lighter than copper, so it brings light into a room, not only warmth.

The finish sets the final brass shade. Polished to a mirror, it glows and reflects the room. Brushed, it turns soft and satiny, with straight lines that catch light from the side. Blackened or patinated, it turns dark and aged, like brass that has lived for years. So when you are looking for a brass color, start with the finish you want.

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. The copper gives it warmth, and the zinc lightens it to gold. Bronze is copper with tin, so it is browner and darker, and copper on its own is reddish.

Because it is beautiful and easy to work, brass has been part of architecture and furniture for centuries, in handles, lamps, doors and railings. Today you also see it on large surfaces, desks, fronts and walls, and that is where our ways of finishing it come in.

Brass-colored paint is paint with a metallic pigment. It gives an even golden tone, but there is no metal in it to polish, brush or patinate. If that is what you need, we do metallic paints too, and we wrote about them in our article on architectural painting.

When you want the surface to look and behave like brass, there are three ways. Liquid metal coating, with real brass powder in a binder, on MDF, wood, metal and aluminum. A finish on solid brass, when the piece is already made of brass. And arc wire spraying, where we spray a layer of brass onto a steel or aluminum piece.

In all three we brush the metal, give it a patina or polish it to a mirror, all in our own production facility. We explain how the coating works in our article on liquid metal coating.

Our catalogue has six brass finishes. Polished Brass is bright and glows like a mirror. Brushed Brass is warm, with straight lines and a satin sheen. Blackened Hairline Brushed Brass is dark, with fine lines and deep shadow. Cloudy Blackened Brass covers warm brass with soft dark clouds. Smoked Patina Brass looks aged, with smoky tones and a soft sheen. And Ombre Patina Brass moves across one surface from light satin brass to deep patina.

We make all of them as a liquid metal coating and on solid brass. And that isn't the whole list. We make many more brass shades to order, as a liquid metal coating and by arc wire spraying too. You will find every finish in our collection, and we wrote about choosing between them in our guide to architectural metal finishes. And if you want metal in a rusty brown, read about Corten steel.

On reception desks and bar counters in hotels and restaurants, in lobbies and offices, on bookcases and shelving and on kitchen fronts. Polished brass draws the eye and throws the light back, and brushed or blackened brass is quieter and works on large surfaces too. Elevator doors in brass have come out of our production facility too.

In a home, a good example is the brass kitchen in Jerusalem designed by Yael Kol. The curved island and the fronts got a liquid metal brass coating, polished to a mirror. In the double-sided aged brass bookshelf by Arnon Nir, an aluminum frame got a liquid metal brass coating in aged satin, with a patina built up in layers. And in the aged brass kitchen by Shooly Avital, the island and the hutch got framed fronts in the same coating, in an aged brass finish.

Best in your hand. Brass looks different in daylight and in warm light, on a large surface and on a small sample. Pick samples from our sample set, or ask for a sample made for your project, and check them where the piece will stand.

Send us drawings or photos, and we will suggest the finish and the way to make it. It usually takes 2 to 4 weeks from sample approval to finished pieces. Since 2017, more than 1,000 projects in Israel and around the world, all made in our own production facility.