Vertical Picket Gates & Fencing
The traditional picket look without the repainting. Open by design — which is the point, and also the limitation.
What picket is for
Picket fencing defines a boundary without hiding what is behind it. Pickets are deliberately spaced, so light, air and sightlines all pass through. On a house with a garden worth seeing, or a period frontage where the architecture is the feature, that openness is the entire reason to choose it.
This is worth being clear about because it is the most common mismatch we see: someone chooses picket for the look and then discovers it does not give them privacy. It never will. If you want screening, you want slats or louvre.
Why aluminium rather than timber
Timber pickets have a specific failure pattern. Posts rot at ground level where they stay damp. Pickets work loose off the rails as the timber moves. The paint needs redoing every few years, and a picket fence has a lot of surface area to repaint.
Aluminium keeps the proportions and eliminates all of that. It does not move with moisture, does not rot, and the powder-coated finish is the finish.
Up close it reads as painted metal rather than timber. For most people that is exactly the trade they want — but if authenticity on a heritage home is the priority, real timber is still the more faithful option.
Two-tone colours
Frame, posts and pickets can each be specified separately, and picket fencing is where this has the most effect. Every combination in our photography works this way: white pickets against black posts, cream against green, cream against red, and a single-tone dark bronze run for contrast.
The principle is that one colour dominates and the other is an accent. Picking out the posts in a deeper heritage colour against lighter pickets reads as a considered detail. Two colours of similar visual weight tends to look uncertain.
The pool question
Pool barriers are subject to specific legal requirements covering gap sizes, heights, climbable zones and self-closing, self-latching gate hardware. Those requirements are set by regulation, they vary by state, and they are enforced.
A decorative picket fence should not be assumed to satisfy them. We will not describe any product on this site as pool compliant.
If your fence or gate is anywhere near a pool, say so in your enquiry so it is addressed directly rather than left to assumption.
