Our Essential Guide to Choosing the Best Decorative Fencing for Your Garden

One of the most fashionable types of fencing, slatted panels perfectly complement a contemporary style of garden.

This type of fencing consists of evenly spaced, horizontal slats, supported by vertical battens to the panel’s rear, resulting in more natural light and better airflow filtering into the garden.

Therefore, not only will slatted fence panels make your garden an even more inviting place to spend time, they’re great for your plants too.

This characteristic ensures slatted panels have superior wind resistance compared to solid fencing, as the gaps between the slats allows the wind to pass through, rather than press against, the panels.

It also enables you to see beyond the confines of your property, which could be a pro or con, depending on where you live.

The definite downsides of slatted fence panels are that they do not provide the same levels of privacy or security as solid fencing. They are only designed to offer partial screening.

Double slatted panels have slats affixed to the front and rear of the supporting wooden battens, as opposed to just the one side. While this allows more natural light and ventilation into the garden than solid fencing, it offers less than single slatted models.

On the flip side of the coin, double slatted fencing provides superior privacy and security to single slatted fencing, but less than solid panels. Therefore, they can be viewed as a sort of ‘halfway house’ between the two.

A further benefit of double slatted fencing, which is worth noting, is that as the slats are fixed to both the front and rear of the vertical battens, the panels look the same from both sides. This is good news for your neighbours, who might even be willing to share installation costs with you.

View our full range of slatted and double slatted fence panels here.

Hit and miss fence panels are also designed with slats that are fixed to both sides of the supporting battens. As they are mounted alternately, in a staggered pattern, this creates the ‘hit and miss’ effect from which the name is derived.

With this type of fencing, the slats can be positioned horizontally or vertically, depending on the fence panel’s design, with the battens fixed the opposite way to the slats.

Either type of slat arrangement creates an eye-catching textured pattern, which is equally attractive from both sides, again presenting a potential opportunity to share costs with your neighbour.

And as hit and miss fence panels’ tightly-packed slats and battens are invariably enclosed within a robust framework, this type of fencing really does seem to strike the perfect balance between beauty and brawn. What’s more, it complements almost any style of garden.

See our full range of hit and miss fence panels here.

Often referred to as lattice, trellis consists of a number of criss-crossing wooden battens. These can be organised horizontally and vertically to form squares, or diagonally to create a diamond-shaped pattern.

The number of battens used and the size of the gaps between them varies, depending on the size and design of the panel.

Trellis is the perfect way to train and support climbing plants, and when used as a fence run creates a wonderfully open feel in a garden. It also boasts similar benefits to slatted panels, in that it provides excellent wind resistance, increases natural light, and promotes good airflow into the garden.

Understandably, the downsides for using it as a fence run are that it offers no real privacy or security.

That said, trellis is exceptionally versatile, so you can always use it to compartmentalise an area within your garden, hide unsightly items or beautify a brick wall, even if you don’t think it matches your main garden boundary requirements.

Trellis fence toppers are also popular. They allow you to change the design or increase the height of an existing fence run – giving it a nice makeover, without going to the expense of replacing the actual panels.

Despite being one of the oldest forms of fencing, trellis can complement and enhance practically any style of garden.

Shop our full range of garden trellis here.

While tongue and groove is probably best known for its use on garden buildings, it is also an effective design for creating high-specification fencing.

Tongue and groove panels consist of tightly-interlocking, thick, smooth-planed wooden boards, fully enclosed within a rebated frame, which gives them a smart, streamlined appearance. Supporting battens are fitted to the rear of the panels to provide even greater strength.

The boards can be arranged horizontally or vertically, according to taste, and this will determine the orientation of the battens. As the eye tends to follow the flow of the boards, when they’re arranged horizontally, this accentuates the fence run’s width. Likewise, vertical tongue and groove panels emphasise the fence panels’ height.

The main benefits of tongue and groove fencing are its strength, longevity and understated style. It provides outstanding levels of privacy and security. There are even tongue and groove panels that can reduce noise pollution, which is a huge selling point if you live near a school or busy road.

Because it is so strong, durable and practical, one could quite easily argue that tongue and groove fence panels are a form of traditional, as opposed to decorative, fencing, but when you consider these panels’ stunning appearance, I’m sure you’ll understand why we’ve included them here.

In terms of downsides, there aren’t any – unless, of course, you’re after the specific benefits of trellis or slatted panels, in which case you’d have no reason to consider tongue and groove, anyway. Tongue and groove really is synonymous with high-class fencing and will suit any type of garden.

See our tongue and groove fence panels here.

Ready-painted grey fence panels make a real standout garden feature and have become extremely popular in recent years.

Because grey is a fashionable colour, it arguably complements contemporary fence panels the most. For this reason, we stock grey slatted (and double slatted) fence panels for sale.

Also referred to as convex fencing, a dome top panel sometimes comes in a combination of two designs. For example, it might have a main body in a hit and miss style, with a trellis top section.

The only strict criteria for fencing to be described as ‘dome top’ is – you’ve guessed it – the wavey-shaped top of the fence panel.

Just like some dome top fencing, mixed decorative fence panels combine two styles of fencing within one panel. However, unlike dome top designs, they will always have a flat top.

If you’d like to find out more about how decorative fence panels compare to other types of garden fencing, read our Fencing Buying Guide now.

Here, at Buy Sheds Direct, we stock a comprehensive range of decorative fencing, including all the main designs, in their most popular sizes.

Buy through us and you can rest assured that every fence panel has been treated against rot and is backed by a long guarantee, so you’ll be spending your hard-earned money on a robust, durable, premium-quality fence run, which will be an attractive asset to your garden for decades to come.

What’s more, all of our decorative fence panels are FSC® certified, which is the world’s most-trusted mark for sustainable forestry. This means that when you buy new fencing at Buy Sheds Direct, you can do so knowing that you’re making an ethical, sustainable purchase, which sits perfectly well alongside the natural aspects of your garden.

Shop our full range of decorative fence panels now!