The sun can get pretty fierce in WA, but home window tinting can make a big difference.
Even if you’re not from around here, it doesn’t take long to work that out. Summers are long, hot, and cloudless and winter isn’t exactly cold.
The sun emits three different kinds of radiation and each kind can cause problems in your house. Firstly, visible light which we can see with our eyes (Well done, Captain Obvious) and can cause glare. Then, infrared which we can feel as heat, and ultraviolet, UVA and UVB. UV rays are what cause sunburn and speed up the aging of your skin, making you wrinkly before your time.
Each of these has a different impact on your home and there are 3M solar window films to prevent the associated problems. They are like sunscreen for your house but way less messy.
Visible light brightens up your home and can help make it feel more spacious and open but doesn’t actually do any damage. Glare can be a danger while driving but is more of an annoyance in your home. One of the biggest issues is privacy. If light comes through your window so can prying eyes.
For this, 3M films have a large range of tinted, decorative, and privacy films. Tinted films look darker than normal glass and are often used on cars. They are an excellent solution for cutting visible light during the day but for night time use when you have the lights on indoors the frosted privacy films are better. These films imitate frosted glass and can be patterned or plain with graduations for a more interesting effect.
Before high tech tinting was available the only thing you could do to stop heat and damage from infrared and UV was to block all the light. People used to put up curtains and shutters and that helped but blocked out visible light too and left the room dark. Now there are home window tinting options to cut out infrared and UV without making your house gloomy.
Infrared radiation simply put, heats things up. The heat you can feel from the pavement or car dashboard is infrared radiation. Infrared is what heats up your house on a sunny day and overworks the aircon. It passes through the glass and starts warming up everything it touches.
So then you have to put the aircon on. Or do you? Newer tech non-metallic non-fade films like the 3M Prestige and 3M Ceramic ranges can reject most of the infrared heat energy coming into your home. The 3M Ceramic range goes up to whopping 97%. This is a massive and noticeable reduction.
These films keep your home’s temperature more constant through the day and reduce the need for aircon. You’ll still need to put it on, it’s Perth in the summer, to avoid using aircon entirely you’d need Gandalf to move in.
Perth winters hardly count as winter at all for most of the Northern hemisphere. But retaining heat in your home through the 3M near-invisible Low-E insulating window film called Thinsulate can still save on your bills. This film stops the infrared coming in during the summer and also stops heat escaping in the cooler months.
Thinsulate is also a good option to Low-E glass on new builds. It works just as well as Low-E glass in winter and far better in summer. The CC40 rejects up to 60% of infrared. It also comes with the 3M lifetime residential warranty.
Ultraviolet is the real baddie. Even though normal glass cuts out a lot of UVA and UVB, it can still fade your furniture, drapes, carpet, and wallpaper and burn your skin if you stay in it long enough.
All 3M Window films, clear or tinted stop a minimum of 99% of UV radiation. Prestige Window film stops 99.9%. It’s the equivalent of SPF 1000. What else can we say?
3M’s Window Film range consists of 4 main ranges:
- Solar only window film – with all the benefits of the films mentioned above
- Clear Security window film – secures your windows against easy break-ins
- Dual benefit combined Solar and Security window film – all the benefits of the solar films and the security film. Stops burglars and UV at the same time.
- Dual benefit Thinsulate Low-E Insulating film for year-round benefits –
heat retention in winter and heat rejection in summer.
3M Window film has something to meet your needs, security, privacy, or a cooler house.
Give us a call and have a chat about what you might need and we can come over and do a free measure and quote. No hassles at all.
Click on the links below to have a closer look at 3M’s Solar Control, Solar Security and Low-E Window films.
