Home interiors have always been attempted to look good and provide added functionality as well. Quality interior designers are always able to suggest decoration ideas that not only look great inside houses but bring functionality to them as well. Additionally, there are many different items made from different materials used inside houses and these materials are well thought out in order to bring both elegant and beautiful looks and functionality as well. When it comes to installing windows, doors, shower or bathroom separators, kitchen multi purpose surfaces or any other rooms beautiful decorative surfaces, many materials have been used in the past and are used in the present as well including wood, metals, plastic or even composite materials. However, glass is one material that stands out in both design appeal and added functionality.
The best thing with glass is that despite traditionally it being related to fragility, the modern manufacturing processes enable strengthened glass sheets to end up even stronger than some of their wood or even metallic counterparts. These durable glass sheets have the tendency to not break or crack even under intense pressures and can handle impacts of great force as well. However, there are many different types of glass available in the modern market and all of them provide different looks as well as a different set of functional traits. Which type of glass should home owners choose to add beauty with functionality largely depends on the specific requirements of each home interior and can change completely from one home to another. Here are few of the glass types explained in order to make home owners understand their behaviors better:
1: Single Layered Thin Glass
This type of glass is the lightest and cheapest as well. It offers the least amount of durability and is manufactured from a single sheet of glass that is heated to melt the material and then cooled off quickly to solidify it in the required state. This type of glass can also be colored internally during the melting and processing phase by adding various elements in the molten material. The color appears internal with no seams or cracks in it.
However, due to the least amount of durability, single layered glass can often not be used for large sized sheets and are rather confined to smaller sized usage, for example, the frame windows with smaller framed patterns in them in churches or older styled buildings. Home owners can also make use of this cheap alternative to their traditional styled windows or doors or even where glass sheets are required in places that will be out of reach of most people and will not be played with or touched regularly at all.
2: Tempered Glass
Much stronger than the traditional single layered glass, tempered glass is also a single layered glass type but goes through different processes to provide it the added strength and durability. Also mostly referred to as the “tempered safety glass”, this type of glass can take great impacts and even when a strong enough impact happens across its surfaces, chances are that it will only crack but the pieces will still hold their place without coming off. Various glass design expert at Fab Glass and Mirror, an innovative manufacturer of glass table tops can help you to select the best-tempered glass for your new home.
Perfect for windows and doors in domestic homes, these tempered glass sheets can be broken off into small dice sized sharp pieces and in a scenario where it is hit strongly enough, the smaller pieces will spread across the surfaces near them possibly causing injuries to the people close by. However, a great forceful impact is required to do so, which in real life settings happens very rarely indeed. When discussing which type of glass should home owners choose to add beauty with functionality, tempered glass because of its high durability and numerous uses presents a good option?
3: Crackled Glass
This is a much different type of glass when it comes to its appearance. It is manufactured with the specific aim of producing apparent cracks in it. Those, however, are not actually cracks, the melting and then solidifying processes are done in a way that in the apparent cracks places, a denser material is allowed to rest and it appears sometimes raised slightly as well while looking like the glass sheet has patterns of cracks in it.
However, this is not to be confused with any lesser durable glass type. In fact, this provides high durability and strength comparable to the strongest types of glass sheets. Cracked glass provides great opportunities for privacy doors where light is allowed to enter but the inside view is blocked completely.
4: Laminated Glass
One of the strongest most durable types of glass is the laminated glass. It is manufactured by sandwiching required number of layers of strengthened glass together using layers of vinyl adhesives in between. The vinyl adhesive layers are completely clear and don’t offer any kind of tinting or coloring at all. The thought behind this super safety glass is that by sandwiching multiple layers of glass together, it will provide much higher levels of strength and durability to start with and then if eventually, a strong enough impact of force does manage to hit and break it, it will crack up internally with possible a hole or a gap at the point of impact but not much glass shards flying around at all that will be held together by the vinyl adhesive layers.
This safety features has boosted laminated glass’ appeal much and made it one of the most used glass types. However, in homes, this type of glass is successfully used in windows, doors or bathroom settings. Even frameless glass sheets like the frameless glass shower door or frameless glass windows can be manufactured using laminated glass.
5: Tinted Glass
Tinted glass offers similar strength as tempered glass and is manufactured by adding various chemicals to the molten form of the mixture. The chemicals cause reactions with the silicon particles in the glass and give it equally distributed colors internally that doesn’t have any breaks or seems in it at all. Other tinting processes involve sheets of plastic in required colors being applied on top of the glass surfaces but they don’t produce a similar elegant effect. Because of their added color, the tinted glass is used in many places in modern homes. Windows, door panels, light bulb covers or glass shower doors employee tinted glass successfully.
6: Embossed Glass
Probably the most luxurious of all the glass types is the embossed glass. It is produced through a special kind of process that ends up the design on the glass slightly raised and appear sort of hazy in color distinguishing it easily from the rest of the glass surface. An embossed glass is also the more expensive type of glass and is made from strengthened glass sheets to give it long durability as well.
Because of its high price point and very elegant and unique appearance, embossed glass is usually used in more expensive homes at different places like doors, windows, kitchen wall decorations or even bathroom shower doors etc. However the added design appeal this type of glass is able to provide is unmatched by most other types of it and when searching for which type of glass should home owners choose to add beauty with functionality, where their costs are not a problem, embossed glass presents the most adorable option.
