Jun. 09, 2025
Woven and welded wire mesh may look similar to the untrained eye, but while they share some characteristics, the materials are distinctly different.
How do you know which one is right for your next project? Find a rundown of each metal mesh product below, along with pointers for choosing a material that best suits your needs.
Woven wire mesh is a metal grid with intersecting vertical (warp) and horizontal (weft) wires that create square-shaped (or sometimes hexagonal) openings. Since the wires only intersect rather than being welded or otherwise fixed together, this type of mesh is typically flexible and easy to manipulate. Though woven mesh is often pliant, it can be more rigid when made with thicker wires.
The mesh is typically made using an industrial loom (sometimes called a weaving machine). Wires are wrapped around a warp beam, then placed into a heddle frame. This separates the warp wires so they can pass through another set of weft wires and create a grid pattern of a specified size.
A wide range of applications call for woven wire mesh. This is especially true when it comes to home improvement and DIY projects. The material is a go-to for everything from gardening, composting, and craft papermaking to pest control, insect screens, and food drying. Artistic DIYers can even use this bendable mesh to create decorative sculptures.
In the industrial sector, it's often used for filtration, screen printing, and particle analysis.
Welded wire mesh is a stainless steel grid with intersections fused together with heat. This material is not malleable but rather rigid and notably strong, maintaining its structure under heavy pressure.
Welded wire mesh is made by first feeding opposing (warp and weft) wire spools through a special welding loom. The machine lays the horizontal wires over the vertical wires to create a grid, then it applies heat to the intersections to fuse the crossing wires together.
Unlike woven wire mesh, the welding process calls for thicker metal wires. This sturdy, inflexible material is ideal for fencing, chicken coops, and animal enclosures. It can also be used for soffit screens, foundation vents, chimney caps, gabions, trellises, and automotive grills.
In the engineering and construction sectors, stainless steel welded mesh is used for infill panels, landslide mitigation, and highway reinforcement.
Welded wire mesh is constructed with thicker wires and is available in larger opening sizes. This material can be used for structural purposes when projects call for durable metal grids.
Woven wire mesh, on the other hand, is available in much finer weaves (including many decorative styles), which makes it useful for cabinet inserts, insect screens, and more.
If you need a large, rigid metal mesh panel with reliable strength, go with welded mesh. If you need something with much smaller openings or that can be manipulated into different shapes, woven mesh is a better choice.
TWP Inc. has been a trusted supplier of wire mesh products for over 50 years. We carry a huge selection of materials, including woven mesh, welded panels, and galvanized hardware cloth—all in stock and ready to ship.
If you're still not sure what type or size you need, we're here to assist. Contact us today!
A woven wire mesh, also known as a woven wire cloth, is made by weaving wire strands in an overunder method or underover method to form different patterns with varying specifications. Some of the most common weave patterns are explained below.
Mesh weave pattern has a significant impact on which use cases it is suitable for. In general, square weaves are well suited for general-purpose applications, while dutch weaves are better suited for air and water filtration.
The size and material of woven wire mesh vary in addition to the weave. Various opening sizes are available, from just a few microns to several inches, as well as metals including aluminium, brass, copper and mild steel.
We hope that this page explains woven mesh for you. This image shows a standard plain stainless steel woven wire mesh panel.
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As the name suggests, The Mesh Company are specialists in all things wire mesh. Our group of companies has been a major supplier of woven and welded wire mesh since . The oldest version of our company brochure makes for an interesting read.
Various types of wire mesh are possible, including woven and welded versions, all of which offer unique advantages suitable for myriad industrial applications.
But what is the difference between woven and welded?
Woven Mesh
In the woven wire mesh industry, a wide variety of mesh types can be manufactured from fine woven meshes for use in micronic filtering applications all the way to coarse woven meshes for use in fencing and security screens.
A key advantage of the material is that it is also more flexible, making it ideal for use with parts and products that have irregular or unusual contours and shapes. Woven mesh can be as fine as silk or cloth because of the fineness of the wires used to weave the mesh, which is far finer than that used to weld the mesh.
Simply put, by weaving mesh on a loom it is possible to go much finer and give a much larger range of size options. For example, this mesh has 500 wires per linear inch.
Welded Mesh
Welded wire mesh is stronger and more rigid than woven wire mesh, making it suitable for use as a protective or barrier material. Due to the welded wire strands, this type of mesh is suitable for parts and products that require tight dimensional tolerances. This rigidity makes welded mesh ideal for fencing.
We recently wrote a detailed article discussing this mesh matchup. If you require a deeper dive into this subject then we suggest that you check it out.
Weaving plain woven wire mesh is similar to traditional textile weaving. A grid-like structure is formed by interlacing individual wires. Wire material is selected first, which can vary depending on the desired mesh properties, such as strength, flexibility, or corrosion resistance.
The weaving process involves setting up the warp wires – the long wires that run the length of the mesh. These are held taut and in place on the loom. The weft wires are then interwoven through the warp wires, alternating over and under each warp wire. This process is repeated, with each weft wire lying parallel to the others, and perpendicular to the warp wires.
Using precision machinery, the mesh is uniform in spacing and wire diameter. Modern looms used for this process can be highly automated, allowing for efficient production of large quantities of wire mesh with uniform quality. It can be used in a variety of applications, from industrial filtration to home décor.
We would recommend a range of cutting tools based on the thickness of the wire that we used to weave our various meshes.
Simply take the cutting tool required for the job and cut along the line of the aperture. Cutting across the wires will leave sharp edges and may reduce the structural integrity of the weave.
We would suggest:
Anything with smaller holes than that should be cut by hand, as you would with a fine fabric. We would use that method of cutting for every size in our fine and super-fine sections.
Our YouTube channel shows various means of cutting our mesh materials. Check us out there for more information.
Again, if you would rather we cut your mesh to size for you then please contact us with your requirement.
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