How Window Film Can Save Energy Costs

Window film is an easy application that significantly decrease your use of heating and air conditioning in your home. Because the film is applied only to the glass areas of windows, installation requires no physical changes to the property.

How Does Window Film Work?

Solar window tinting works by reducing the amount of the spectrum of natural light that is allowed to pass through a window. A large part of the spectrum in the ultra violet range is blocked all together. This reduces the amount of heat that is accumulated within solid objects in a room which, in turn, reduces the amount of radiant heat that a room is subjected to by the contents. The ultra violet wave lengths are also the ones that fade colors in woven fabrics and painted or varnished surfaces. Ultra violet light acts very much like a bleach, neutralizing artificially created colors.

Primary Energy Saving

Window film delivers it's biggest savings in the cost of cooling an over-heated room. Reducing the amount of light entering through a window keeps the room from heating up rapidly. The room may only need to be cooled towards the end of the day when the cumulative effect of the available sunlight has become too much.

Careful use of air conditioning at this point can reduce the room to a comfortable level at which point the air conditioning can be switched off. The temperature in the room will be maintained for some time by the reflection back into the room of heat by the window. The walls, which do not have a reflective film, will also still be radiating some heat into the room.

Synchronizing Air Conditioning and Film

To get the best benefit from the use of solar window tinting the timing and power in the air conditioning need to be set so that they only reduce the room temperature to a comfortable level. Far too often the air conditioning is set to turn a room into a freezer. Windows will naturally reflect heat back into a room and solar film does not interfere with that so maintaining a comfortable level of heat once the air conditioning has achieved it and been switched off is fairly automatic.

Secondary Energy saving

Window coatings tend to help reduce condensation. The heat that would normally be absorbed in the evaporation of the condensation is significantly reduced which means that ambient temperatures can be maintained with a lower use of heating energy. The reduction in the humidity of the atmosphere by the lack of evaporation will also tend to make the air feel warmer and more comfortable. If a plain, transparent window film is used the secondary savings will also include a reduction in the amount of artificial lighting that needs to be used.

A tinted window can cut out as much as 65% of the visible light spectrum making a room seem gloomy even at the height of the day. An efficient clear film will have little effect upon the visible light spectrum leaving the room bright, needing no artificial light.