Types of Glass

There are many dif­fer­ent types of glass to choose – each with its own unique pros and cons:

Dou­ble-Pane Insu­lat­ed Glass is formed when two pieces of glass are spaced apart and sealed to form a sin­gle-glazed unit with an air space in between the two pieces of glass. This air space cre­ates insu­la­tion for the win­dow, keep­ing heat inside the home dur­ing cold weather.

Lam­i­nat­ed Glass is cre­at­ed by join­ing two or more pieces of glass togeth­er with an inner lay­er of trans­par­ent plas­tic. It is designed to retain adher­ence of glass on the plas­tic lay­er in the event of break­age. Lam­i­nat­ed glass is four times more impact resis­tant than non-tem­pered glass. It also is very effec­tive in reduc­ing sound trans­mis­sion through the window.

Low E Glass is a low emis­siv­i­ty glass that has a trans­par­ent coat­ing on it. This coat­ing acts as a ther­mal mir­ror, as it reflects radi­ant heat and allows the pas­sage of vis­i­ble light. In hot cli­mates, Low E glass reflects solar heat, keep­ing the inside of your home cool­er. In cold cli­mates, Low E glass reflects the radi­ant heat back into the house, keep­ing your home warm. Cool­ing and heat­ing costs are ulti­mate­ly reduced, as the Low E keeps your house com­fort­able dur­ing both the win­ter and sum­mer seasons.

Obscure Glass is used for pri­va­cy, dec­o­ra­tion or light dif­fu­sion. A design is pressed into the glass dur­ing the rolling process and this design makes the glass translu­cent, allow­ing light to pass through, but cre­at­ing a blurred surface.

Sin­gle-Pane Glass is exact­ly what one would assume. Because it con­sists of only one pane of glass, it is not insu­lat­ed in any way and is there­fore con­sid­ered very inef­fi­cient with respect to ener­gy con­ser­va­tion. It is not uncom­mon to be able to feel the tem­per­a­ture dif­fer­ence next to a sin­gle-pane win­dow ver­sus the rest of the room. Old­er build­ings were built almost exclu­sive­ly with sin­gle-pane windows.

Tem­pered Glass is reheat­ed to a tem­per­a­ture right below its melt­ing point and is then cooled quick­ly. This process makes the glass much stronger than reg­u­lar glass. Tem­pered glass is designed to spread force and break into many small­er pieces upon impact.

Tint­ed Glass reduces both visu­al and radi­ant trans­mit­tance in the win­dow. It reduces heat trans­fer, as it fil­ters out ultra­vi­o­let light. The tint is cre­at­ed when a min­er­al called Admix­ture is added to the glass.