The anchor is the whole job
Iron fails at its fixings long before the metal gives up. Anchored into a stucco pilaster, a surface-mounted base plate telegraphs rust through the render within about five years — the water gets behind the plate, the steel expands, and the stucco cracks off in sheets. We core-drill and epoxy-set into the pilaster instead.
The same logic applies to gates. A wrought iron leaf is heavy, and the hinge side has to be anchored into something structural. Where the pilaster is decorative rather than load-bearing, we say so at quote rather than hanging a gate on it and returning in two years.
How it gets detailed
Plain horizontal top rail. Modern, quiet, and the easiest to pair with a contemporary house. Cheapest of the four.
Traditional pointed pickets. Genuinely harder to climb, and the profile most HOA design committees in the older streets expect to see.
Iron panels between rendered pilasters. The dominant Bel Air and Beverly Hills language — and the detail where anchoring matters most.
Steel frame with ipe or redwood infill. Privacy where you want it, view where you do not, in one continuous run.
Wrought iron fence we have built
What decides the detail
Powder coat over bare steel fails at every cut edge and weld. Sections get primed properly, and anything within reach of coastal air gets hot-dip galvanised first.
Core-drilled and epoxy-set into the pilaster, never surface-plated. A surface plate pushes rust through stucco within about five years.
Picket spacing on a pool barrier is fixed by code, and so is anything climbable on the inside face. Decorative scrollwork often fails that test.
Questions we get asked
Will a wrought iron fence rust in Los Angeles?
Inland, a properly primed and powder-coated fence goes decades with nothing more than a wash. Within a couple of miles of the coast, salt air gets into every cut edge and weld, which is why coastal jobs get hot-dip galvanised substrate under the coating. That costs more up front and roughly doubles the service life there.
Can wrought iron stand up to harsh weather?
Better than any other fencing material we install. It does not warp, swell, split or burn. The failure mode is corrosion at the fixings and coating breaks, both of which are detailing problems rather than material ones.
Is wrought iron a good pool fence?
Yes, and it is the most common code-compliant choice because it gives supervision sight lines. Picket spacing, height and latch position are set by code, and decorative scrollwork often fails the no-climbable-horizontal rule on the inside face — we design the panel to pass rather than retrofitting it later.
Can you repair or extend my existing iron fence?
Usually. We match section profile and picket spacing where the stock is still made, re-anchor anything that has pulled out of stucco, and cut out and re-weld corroded sections. Where a profile is discontinued we will say so rather than fitting something that reads as almost-matching.
Get a real number
Tell us the opening width and we will tell you what it takes. Site visits are free inside the service area and take about forty minutes.