Ken Reichel - Aluwood Garage

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The first thing you see

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Ken Reichel's double garage stands next to his white, modern two-story house. From the street, it is the first thing you notice — before the front door, before the garden.

That is the trouble with most garages. They are the biggest box on the plot and the least considered: A door, a wall, a roof. And it is probably the part of the house you use most. Next to a house designed with care, a plain garage can easily look like it belongs to someone else.

Ken's garage is clad in vertical black slats that wrap straight around the corner and run across the band above the wide black door. Against the white house, it looks like part of the design.

Black fluted garage wall with a garage door, a gravel and bark planting bed and a white house wall

The black on this garage

WoodUpp Aluwood outdoor facade panel, 240 x 45.1 cm, tall and narrow with vertical black ridges, displayed against a plain white background.

Aluwood | Outdoor Panel

Alu, Black, 240 x 45,1 cm

$82.00

A black that stays black

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The garage is clad in Aluwood Alu Black: Aluminum slats with a wood-like finish that is fade-resistant and maintenance-free. For a black facade, that is the whole point. A black wall that goes patchy looks neglected fast, and this one needs no oiling, no painting and no yearly to-do.

Up close, the slats have a matte finish with a fine texture and deep black gaps between them. Over the garage door, they run in a finer pitch, so even the narrow band above the door is part of the pattern.

It is the kind of wall you run your hand along on the way to the front door. Matte, even, and the same deep black from the paving to the roof edge.

Hand resting on a black vertically slatted garage wall

One design, from fence to front door

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The black does not stop at the garage. Black slats return at the entrance, and a black slatted fence runs along the edge of the plot. House, garage and garden read as one design — white and black, calm and clean, softened by lavender and grasses along the base of the wall.

Out back, the same calm carries on: A lawn, a patio and an olive tree in a white planter. Pull into the drive, and nothing looks like an afterthought.

If your garage is the biggest thing your neighbors see, maybe it deserves the same care as the house. Order an Alu Black sample and hold it against your own walls.

Person in black boots walking on a gravel and stone path along a black slatted garage wall

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Olive tree in a concrete planter in a modern garden, seen past a black slatted wall

Aluwood, on your building

Black, brown or gray. Aluwood clads facades, garages and garden walls, and asks for very little once it is up.

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