High-Performance Window Films

Specialty plastic films have been used for decades as a retrofit measure to reduce solar heat gain through windows. Many early aftermarket films were better at stopping light than heat, however. Applied to the interior glazing surface, tinted films were designed to prevent solar gain by absorbing the full spectrum of the sun: both light and heat. The darkest films absorbed the most heat but also the most light; interiors sometimes required additional electric lighting—and the heat gain resulting from those lights. Adding insult to injury, the heated films would then radiate, conduct, and convect a significant portion of the heat that they “blocked” into the room.
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