Powder coating a stainless bottle is a multi-stage process, not a single one: the body is cleaned, a primer or a base is applied where needed, the colour coat is sprayed electrostatically and cured, and a finish pass decides whether the result is matte, satin or gloss. Adhesion depends far more on the cleaning and the cure than on the powder itself.
The stages
- Cleaning and pre-treatment. Oil from forming and drawing has to be gone. This is the stage whose failure shows up months later as flaking.
- Base coat where the colour needs one. Not every colour or body needs it, but a light shade over bare steel usually does.
- Colour application. Electrostatic powder, matched to a Pantone reference.
- Cure. Time and temperature together. Under-cured coating looks perfect on the day and fails at the first wash.
- Finish. Matte, satin or gloss, and whether a soft-touch or a shimmer effect is added.
The finishes, and what each one is for
| Finish | Reads as | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Soft-touch matte | Warm and premium, no fingerprints | Feels better than it photographs |
| Spray coating, satin | Even and predictable | The most forgiving across a long run |
| Metallic powder | Catches light without mirroring | Flake size changes the whole character |
| Electroplated / PVD | Iridescent, mirror-like | Most expensive, least forgiving of handling |
| Mirror polish, uncoated | Bare stainless | Nothing to chip because nothing is applied |
The colour tolerance conversation
Powder over a curved steel body will not match a Pantone swatch exactly under every light. The right time to agree how close is close enough is before the run, not after the container arrives. Ask for the tolerance in writing and ask what happens if a batch falls outside it — a supplier who can answer both has run enough of these to know.
Questions buyers ask
Is power coating dishwasher safe?
A correctly pre-treated and correctly cured coating holds up to normal washing. Most failures traced to “cheap coating” are failures of pre-treatment or cure, which is why we keep both in-house.
Can you coat a bare-metal interior?
The interior of a drinking vessel is normally left as finished stainless, because that is the food-contact surface. Coating is applied to the outside.
Why does the same colour look different on two bodies?
Curvature, thickness of the coat and the surface underneath all change how a colour reads. Two bodies can carry the same reference and still look slightly different side by side.
The colour ranges we run are on the customisation page, and the quality page covers how the coating is checked.
