A rainscreen is a wall design in which the outer cladding sheds most rain, and a drained, ventilated cavity behind it handles what gets through. Behind the cavity is the water resistive barrier, which acts as the real line of water protection. The cladding can be brick, metal panel, fiber cement, terracotta, or wood.
Cladding joints let some water through no matter how well they’re built. A rainscreen accepts that and gives the water a path down and out. The air gap also breaks capillary contact and lets the wall dry. That makes a rainscreen wall more forgiving than a face sealed wall, which depends on a perfect outer seal.
Most masonry veneer walls are rainscreens, with a cavity, weeps, and through-wall flashing. In metal panel and fiber cement systems, rails or clips set the cavity depth. A pressure-equalized rainscreen goes further by compartmentalizing the cavity so that air pressure on both sides of the cladding stays close to equal.
A rainscreen is a raincoat with a gap behind it. The coat catches most of the rain, and anything that gets through runs down the gap and out.
For more details, check our blogs. For a comparison of the two approaches, see Architect’s Guide to Rainscreen vs. Face-Sealed Wall Assemblies. For the system itself, see Rainscreen Wall Systems for Ventilation and Moisture Control.
A rainscreen wall touches nearly every detail on the facade, from the base of the wall to the parapet. When the wall system changes, D.TO helps teams find and update every affected detail, keeping the drawing set consistent with the current design and cutting the rework that usually follows a late change.
See how D.TO fits into your daily design workflow on the key features page, or schedule a demo to explore it in more detail.
