If you have ever wondered why certain home windows are darker than others, this is because those windows are using home window tinting in Santa Monica. These are designed for more than just offering extra privacy to your home. They also protect your home from warm air and dangerous sun rays. The science behind this feature focuses on a controlling the window’s ability to absorb and transmit solar radiation into your house, which helps keep your family safe and the air inside your house cooler.
Solar Energy
Solar radiation is emitted from sunlight in the form of photons. These photons contain specific amounts of sunlight. This amount of energy also determines how much the photons vibrate, which is known as their wavelength. The photons found in sunlight can each have various amounts of energy and wavelengths. Yet it is only the photons with wavelengths between 2500 to 290 nm that reach the earth’s surface and your windows. Anything longer is absorbed by moisture and carbon dioxide. Shorter wavelengths are absorbed by nitrogen and oxygen. The energy carried by photons and their energy wavelengths are inversely related to each other. This means that photons that carry longer wavelengths have less energy and vice versa.
Solar Contact with Windows
When solar radiation makes contact with your home windows, some of the photons are absorbed, others are reflected, but the majority of the photons pass through your window and enter inside your household. It is the absorbed radiation that makes your home warm. As the glass becomes warmer, it warms the surrounding air inside and outside your home. The radiation transmitted inside your house further increases the temperature of the air and is absorbed by nearby objects, making them warmer. These objects can start emitting the radiation, but at much lower energy levels and longer wavelengths. These lower energy levels are what prevent warm air from transmitting out of your window, making your home hot and stuffy.
Improves Home Cooling Efficiency
Window films, or tints, are a polyester-like laminate that is layered of the glass of your window. Their primary purpose to reduce the amount of solar radiation that can enter inside your home. These films are usually dyed or metallized so that visible light can still enter, but any solar radiation is quickly converted into infrared radiation. This makes it easier for the solar radiation to be rejected and keeps it from entering inside your home where it can cause heat damage to your skin or other objects in your house. The outside pane of the window is sometimes coated with a low-emission glaze that helps minimize the amount of radiation entering your house, which in turn reduces the amount of radiation that gets trapped inside your house. This glaze is what also reduces visibility from people looking through your window from outside your home.