Materials & Standards

Saint-Gobain Gyproc Gypsum Board

I tried a couple of cheaper Indian brands between 2015 and 2017. Every one of them sagged within two monsoons. Bangalore humidity hangs at 75-80% from June to October, and anything below MR (moisture resistant) grade gives up. We standardised on Gyproc. For IT fit-outs in Whitefield, Electronic City, and the Bagmane Tech Park side, we spec Gyproc Habito or the acoustic board. STC 45+ between a meeting room and an open floor means two people can actually have a private call. Board thickness arrives at a true 12.5mm or 15mm, batch after batch. If you have ever tried to float a 2mm variation under a skim coat, you know why that matters. Server rooms get Moistbloc because mould eats standard paper liners here. Tracks and studs are 0.55mm GI, never the 0.45mm stuff floating around the Peenya market at ₹8 per metre less. Saved pennies, ruined walls.

Kajaria and Somany Vitrified Tiles

A busy office corridor in Koramangala or Indiranagar takes 500 to 800 pairs of feet a day. That needs a tile with MOHS hardness of 7 plus, otherwise you get a halo of micro-scratches from rolling chairs within the first year. Our default ranges are Kajaria Eternity and Somany DuraFlex. For clinic corridors and hospital wings we switch to anti-skid variants with a coefficient of friction above 0.6, which is what NBC 2016 asks for in public areas. Premium lobbies get double-charge tiles. Through-body pattern means a chip does not flash a pale grey heart under a grey-black surface. On tighter budgets, soluble salt tiles are fine for mid-traffic zones at roughly 30-40% less. We lay them on a cement-sand screed with 3mm spacers and epoxy grout, never cementitious grout for commercial, and we put an expansion joint every 6 metres. Bangalore temperatures swing enough between February and May to crack a 20m unbroken run.

Greenlam HPL Laminates

Workstation tops take a beating. Laptops, coffee mugs, staplers, and the cleaning staff with a damp cloth every morning. Melamine-faced boards start looking tired inside 12 to 18 months. Greenlam HPL sits above 4N on pencil hardness, which holds up for the life of the desk. For lobby cladding and lift-surround panels, we use Greenlam fire-rated HPL that meets IS 15491 Class 1, which the Karnataka Fire department will actually sign off. Post-forming grade lets us wrap a curved reception desk in a single sheet without a visible seam. Greenlam runs a Bangalore depot (off Mysore Road), so stock is usually a three-day lead time instead of three weeks. 1mm for horizontal, 0.8mm for vertical. The anti-fingerprint matte range is excellent in client-facing meeting rooms. Batch colour is tracked so a 40-foot wall does not show a shade change between panels.

Havells and Schneider Electrical

Every MCB, RCCB, and DB on our sites carries ISI marking. BESCOM will flag anything non-ISI at the first inspection. Standard office distribution boards are Havells. Premium fit-outs with intelligent metering and load monitoring are Schneider Electric. A typical Bangalore commercial 3-phase setup runs a 63A or 100A TP+N main incomer, with SPN breakers on the branches feeding workstation zones, lighting circuits, and HVAC indoor units. Earthing is the tricky bit. Bangalore sits on Peninsular Gneissic rock, so soil resistivity is high and getting below 5 ohms is not automatic. We use copper-bonded rods driven to 3m, bentonite backfill around the electrode, and we retest after the first monsoon. Panels are powder-coated MS, IP43 minimum. Separate earths for IT, general power, and lightning protection, per IS 3043. We document the earth readings in the handover file.

Century Plyboards BWR Grade

BWR (Boiling Water Resistant, IS 303 marked) is our floor for every commercial job. Standard MR grade survives a dry office, but the moment a pantry under-counter gets a leaky valve or a washroom vanity catches a splash, MR board delaminates inside 3 to 5 years. Bangalore humidity only accelerates that. BWR is phenol formaldehyde bonded and holds up. For washroom vanities, pantry counters, and any cabinet sitting against a glazed south facade where condensation forms, we step up to marine grade (72-hour boiling test). Standard sizes we pull: 19mm for cabinet carcass, 12mm for internal shelves, 6mm for back panels. Every cut edge gets ABS edge-banding. That single detail is the most common failure point we see on competitor jobs. Century ships batch-level IS 303 certificates and we drop those straight into the client handover folder.

Saint-Gobain Toughened Glass

For a full-height office partition (anything taller than 2,100mm) we use 12mm toughened glass. Below 2,100mm, 10mm is fine and saves roughly 15% on the sheet. Everything toughened, per IS 2553 Part 2. Float glass breaks into shards that can put someone in hospital. Toughened breaks into sugar-cube fragments. In an office with 200 people walking past glass doors every hour, that choice is not really a choice. For cabin-to-cabin acoustic privacy we run 12mm toughened with an acoustic PVB interlayer. That gets us STC 38 to 42, which is enough to stop speech carrying between two meeting rooms on either side of a shared wall. Edges are flat-ground minimum. Nickel sulphide inclusions still take out roughly 1 panel in 500 over its life, so we always add a couple of replacement panes to the material order.

Codes We Work To

These are not decoration on a spec sheet. They are what keeps a building standing, dry, and legal.

• IS 456, Plain and Reinforced Concrete. Mix design, rebar detailing, cover, member sizing. Applies to raised floors, loft slabs, and any structural partition.
• IS 800, General Construction in Steel. Mezzanine floors, canopies, long-span interior framing. Weld sizes and connection detailing come from here.
• National Building Code 2016. The umbrella code. Fire, structure, plumbing, electrical, accessibility. Everything references back to NBC.
• IGBC Green Building Rating. We design interiors to support IGBC credits when the client is chasing Gold or Platinum. Material origin, VOC, indoor air, MEP efficiency all count.
• ECBC, Energy Conservation Building Code. Lighting power density, chiller efficiency, envelope U-values. Karnataka enforces this on any commercial above 500 sq.m. and the enforcement is tightening each year.
• Karnataka Fire and Emergency Services Regulations. Fire-rated compartmentation, exit widths, sprinkler and alarm specs, smoke management for buildings above 15m. The local rules that override NBC where they are stricter.

What This Means on a Real Project

These specs are not aspirational. They go into every BOQ we write, from a ₹18 lakh startup fit-out to a ₹14 crore office shell. You get the full material list upfront, with brand, grade, IS code, and quantity.