At nearly £400 million, the Sheffield Building Schools for Future (BSF) programme is one of the largest in the country. The co-located Newfield and Talbot schools opened in January in the south west of the city, providing new learning facilities which include recording, dance and drama studios, a gym and fitness suite and a Global Conferencing Centre.

Newfield is an 11-16 comprehensive school built to accommodate 1,050 pupils and Talbot is an innovative, specialist school for young people with complex learning difficulties. The £33 million project has been built by Taylor Woodrow working with HLM Architects. Buildings incorporate high-tech features such as cashless catering and automatically controlled lights and windows which monitor the classroom environment and minimise power consumption.

Different subject areas within the school have been defined by the use of colour-coding including the installation of 538 Leaderflush Shapland laminate-faced, Designer range doorsets. Some of the door-faces incorporate bespoke graphics to indicate the room’s function - for example, there is a music note on the main hall door, a paint brush for the art-room and cutlery for the food areas.

Jana Bareham of HLM explained how the bold, colourful surroundings are more than purely decorative, “The colour-coding is extremely useful for way-finding, especially important in the Talbot School, and it creates a truly inspirational environment for learning.”

Leaderflush Shapland worked together with the design teams and with the Formica^® Bespoke Service Department, who supplied the unique graphic and solid colour, high pressure laminate facings which were matched to BS and RAL colours used in the surrounding décor. Performance characteristics for the doors include fire ratings of up to 60 minutes and sound reduction of up to 39 Rw dB.