What Are Aluminium Slat Gates?
An aluminium slat gate is a welded aluminium frame filled with spaced slats. Everything else — how private it is, how it looks, how it opens — comes down to choices made before it is built.
The basic construction
An aluminium slat gate is a perimeter frame with slats fixed across the opening inside it. The frame carries all the load — it is what the hinges bolt to and what keeps the gate square — and the slats are infill. Look at the photo of a completed gate leaf standing on grass before installation and the construction is obvious: a rectangular frame, and a set of evenly spaced slats between the two stiles.
Everything that makes one slat gate different from another happens at fabrication. The frame is cut to the size of your opening. The slat spacing is set to the privacy you asked for. The colour is applied as a powder coating before assembly. Once it is built, none of those things change.
This is the practical difference between a made-to-measure gate and a stock one. A stock gate is a fixed size that has to be adapted to your opening, usually by adding packers or living with a bigger gap. A made-to-measure gate is set out for your opening from the start, which is why the slat pattern lands correctly at the top and bottom instead of finishing on a half-slat.
Why aluminium rather than steel
Aluminium does not rust. That single property is the reason it dominates this market. Steel gates fail from the inside out where water gets past the coating — at welds, at fixing points, and along the bottom rail where the gate sits closest to the ground. Aluminium does not have that failure mode.
It is also much lighter, which matters more than it sounds. A lighter leaf puts less leverage on its hinges and posts, sags less over time, and is easier to move — whether by hand or by a gate motor.
Aluminium is softer than steel, so it dents more easily under a direct impact. On a gate that is a fair trade for never having to deal with rust.
- No rust, which is the failure mode that ends most steel gates
- Significantly lighter, so less load on hinges and posts
- Powder-coated finish rather than paint that needs redoing
- Softer than steel, so more prone to denting on impact
The four slat styles
Horizontal slats run left to right and are the most commonly specified style in Australia. They make an opening read wider and lower, and they match most modern fencing already on site.
Vertical slats are the same flat profile rotated on end. They add apparent height, look more formal, and handle sloping ground far better because the panel can rake while every slat stays plumb.
Louvre uses angled blades rather than flat slats. The angle blocks the direct sightline while leaving a clear air path, which gives you close to solid-gate privacy with a fraction of the wind load.
Vertical picket is the traditional picket proportion built in aluminium. It is deliberately open — you can see through it — so it suits frontages that should stay welcoming rather than screened.
How privacy actually works
The most common misunderstanding is that slat direction controls privacy. It does not. Privacy comes from the gap between the slats. A horizontal gate and a vertical gate with the same spacing screen the same amount when you are looking straight at them.
What direction changes is how the gate reads — wider and lower, or taller and more formal — and how it copes with ground that is not level.
If you want maximum screening, the choice is between closing the slat spacing right down or moving to a louvre profile. Closing the spacing is cheaper but progressively increases the wind the panel catches, which flows through to how heavily the frame, hinges and posts need to be built. Louvre gets you there through the blade angle instead, so the panel stays open to airflow.
