By Mashum Mollah
Interiors in different types of settings and layouts have always been required to look good, elegant, and unique in their own way. Interior designers and home or office owners are always looking for bright ideas to implement that look good and provide sustainability as well.
Energy is getting expensive by the minute, and one of the great asks of the modern day is to use as little of it as possible in order to both reduce energy bills and also harm the planet as little as possible in the process.
Glass has always been looked at as one of the answers to the energy problem. When installed in the right way, glass products have the ability to shine the interiors bright with natural daylight and also keep them warm to a certain extent in colder climates, reducing energy consumption significantly in the process.
Here are a few energy-efficient implementations of glass in different settings and layouts that can reduce energy bills and also hurt the planet the least as well:
1: Laminated Glass Windows
Windows are necessary in every kind of domestic and office setting these days. Rarely do you ever see a house or an office building that doesn’t have any kind of windows installed in it? Traditionally, windows have been made from wood or even plastic in some cases.
However, these wooden or plastic windows required consumption of natural resources much greater than glass sheets to start with and additionally failed to provide energy-efficient options that could let natural daylight pass through while not letting in the extreme weather conditions or letting out the maintained inside temperatures as well.
Laminated glass windows are manufactured using multiple layers of glass sandwiched together using layers of vinyl or clear adhesives that provide a temperature-insulated sheet of finished glass that is much more durable than even some of the wooden options and doesn’t lose quality with the passage of time of exposure to extreme outdoor conditions.
Additionally, these laminated glass windows, being clear and transparent, have the ability to pass through natural daylight efficiently, requiring almost no energy to be spent, at least during the day time, to light up the rooms. When looking for energy-efficient implementations of glass in different settings and layouts, laminated glass windows provide a very resourceful option.
2: Durable Glass Doors
Much like their glass window counterparts, the glass doors provide similar durable and strong options that have the ability to temperature insulate the door area while letting in the important daylight that saves energy consumption significantly.
Laminated glass sheets also provide outstanding security options because they don’t break off into small pieces even when hit by a sharp and heavy enough object. Instead, the lamination of the glass sheets with strong vinyl keeps the sharp glass shards in place and becomes very hard to break through.
The added security feature, along with their ability to let the daylight pass through, make durable glass doors very sustainable options for numerous domestic or office usage and help keep the energy bills to a minimum while reducing the carbon footprint and wasting the least amount of energy in the process as well.
3: Glass Shower Doors and Screens
After the bathroom windows have been replaced with efficient glass windows, the next best thing to do is to install glass shower doors and glass shower screen enclosure as well. The laminated glass shower doors and screens have the ability to keep the rest of the bathroom as dry as possible and also do not require any extra lighting to be installed inside the shower space at all.
Their clear transparent surfaces will let all the light from outside during the day or from the artificial sources installed in other parts of the bathroom pass through and keep the shower space lit without wasting any extra energy.
Energy spent in keeping the shower areas lit up for all the time they are in use can be saved by implementing this idea, and their added elegance is another of their trait as well. The clear glass shower doors and screens will not hide any of the beautiful tiles or other designs that are implemented in the bathroom space at all.
4: Laminated Glass Cabin Walls for the Offices
Separate cabins are used in offices all over the world for employees of different designations. Traditionally, these cabins have been fitted with wooden walls and have required excessive amounts of extra lighting to keep them well-lit even during the day time.
However, installing clear laminated glass walls on the side facing the windows, or all of them for that matter, has the ability to light them up using the natural daylight entering the office space through the windows.
This has the ability to reduce energy consumption and carbon footprint of the office by a lot. When looking for energy-efficient implementations of glass in different settings and layouts, this one shines bright for office spaces.
5: Laminated Glass Indoor Sports Complexes
Indoor sports like squash, basketball, and shorter forms of football or even gymnastics are very common in sports complexes in educational institutes or general sports arenas. Naturally, people practicing these sports require lighting of the highest level in order to perform them safely.
When windows or walls for these indoor sports halls are made from bricks or wood, they require great amounts of artificial lighting to keep them lit up adequately. This requires a high amount of energy to be spent and consumed.
The more sustainable and energy efficient option is to install large sized laminated glass clear windows or even walls for these indoor sports complexes, this has the ability to keep their interiors lit up using the natural daylight from outside without requiring any or much artificial lighting at all.
As a result of this, the carbon footprint of these sports complexes gets reduced by a great deal, and the energy bills are shortened up to great amounts. As well as most of the sports are performed during the day at sports complexes. An additional benefit is that glass windows look great both from the inside and from the outside as well.
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