PVD deposits a thin, extremely hard coating in a vacuum chamber. On stainless it produces gold, rose gold, black and bronze tones that are far more durable than paint and will not fade in sunlight the way a lacquer will.

Chrome is electroplated and gives the brightest mirror-like result, but it is a different process with different substrate preparation and different longevity outdoors.

Neither can be repaired on site. A scratch through a PVD layer exposes the stainless underneath and cannot be polished out without removing the coating around it, which is why handling and packing matter more on PVD work than on brushed work.

For a rollout, hold the PVD batch reference. Gold tones drift slightly between production runs, and two letters from different batches on the same fascia will not match even though both are within specification.