Glass Houses – Residential Use of Glass

Windows set the tone for your home – providing views, ventilation, daylight and a sense of spaciousness. They also have a critical role in your home’s comfort and energy consumption.

Viridian Performance Glass
Advancements in glass technology have dramatically increased the energy benefits and comfort levels possible in your home. Comparing glass made in the 1960s to today’s modern performance glass is like comparing a transistor radio to an iPod. These changes influence home design, whether building a new home or renovating a classic, performance glass allows you to have larger windows while delivering far greater energy efficiency and comfort.

Home Comfort
We have a relatively narrow temperature range where we feel ‘comfortable’ in our homes. Heating and cooling make a home more comfortable but of course use energy, cost money, create greenhouse gases and sometimes lead to a more ‘artificial’ feel when compared to naturally maintained ambient temperature. It is far better, where possible, to keep a home at the right temperature through good design and choice of materials for the walls, ceilings, flooring, roofing and windows. Performance glass is the only building material that not only insulates us from temperature extremes, it can also control the passage of light and heat into and out of our homes.

Classic Homes
Buildings in general reflect the needs, technology and style of the age in which they were built. Classic homes are often typified by pitched roofs with eaves and often featuring traditional residential claddings like bricks, weatherboards and plaster, these homes have beautiful features just waiting to be enhanced. Unfortunately, they also frequently suffer from dark spaces, poor insulation, pokey rooms and a failure to work with their natural surroundings. Light is the starting point and primary building block for all architecture, and glass is the principle medium for mastering light – a home with good natural light exudes a sense of optimism and well being. Increasingly, owners of classically styled homes are incorporating modern architectural glass features that better meet with today’s needs and lifestyle.

Contemporary Homes
Modern home design tends toward larger areas of glass. With today’s performance glass, home designers are confident in their use of light and views. Even in built-up urban areas, light can be the single most abundant natural element available, which can be harnessed through the clever use of internal light wells, glass partitions or courtyards. In contemporary homes, the use of glass extends beyond predictable arrangements of window frames, and glass becomes a key element of structure and design in its own right, collaborating with a diverse range of contemporary building materials and systems. All of this seeks to reflect a design that is better connected with its environment, embracing light and the home’s natural context, rather than fighting against it. Energy efficienct building products, such as performance glass, can be considered less of a cost and more of an investment. Windows have a big influence on the energy efficiency rating of your home, which may affect its future value and attractiveness to potential buyers.

Finding the Right Products
The choice of performance glass depends upon your location (see ‘Latitude Matters’), window orientation, energy requirements and considerations around security, privacy and style. There is a performance glass product to suit almost every application and requirement. Viridian Glass is Australasia’s leading producer of performance glass and you can explore the products and their different uses on our website www.viridianglass.com and find out more about the factors that affect glass choice at See Beyond Windows.

We also have a specialist section of the Viridian website, focusing on residential requirements, click here for a direct link. Tell us your experience and how you have used glass to improve your home.