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Tag Archive for: glass design

Glass Decorating Enjoys a Revival

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Glass Decorating Enjoys a Revival

Glass Decorating Enjoys a Revival

Glass is an exceptional decorating and design material, and you have to admit that it has a lot going for it. It’s inexpensive when compared to other decorating materials. It’s versatile. It’s generally a “local” product. It’s simple. It transmits light. It’s practical. It can be used in interiors or exteriors. It’s generally safe. It’s a great sound insulator. It’s elegant – the list goes on.

Despite these clear advantages, glass wasn’t heavily used in decoration until relatively recently. Fortunately, designers are rediscovering the long list of benefits that glass offers. Improvements in glass have made it possible to safely incorporate glass into virtually every area of a home or office space.

Laminated and tempered glasses offer protection from breakage and potential injury. That enables glass to be used safely in doors, room dividers, displays and even in furniture. Although the transparency of glass can make it a useful decorating material, you can enhance the glass by coating it with paint.

Ordinary paints won’t bond to glass because paint is designed to adhere to porous surfaces. Because the paint can’t adhere to non-porous glass, it is vulnerable to chipping, peeling and fading once the paint has dried. It also fares poorly in high humidity environments.

Glass paint is specially formulated, so it does more than coat glass. It creates a nanoscale bond with the surface of the glass, so once it is cured, the paint is bonded permanently. It will not chip or peel because it actually modifies the surface of the glass. Ordinary paint doesn’t do that. In addition, Glassprimer™ glass paint is designed to provide superior UV resistance, so it won’t fade, even when it’s exposed to direct sunlight. That makes it ideal for a variety of painting projects that incorporate glass.

Glass has a number of decorating advantages. If it isn’t currently on your list of go-to materials, it should be!

Photo Credit: Chuck Berridge, via Flickr.com

Design rehabs feature light and glass

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Design rehabs feature light and glass

Design rehabs feature light and glass

Remodeling can be an exceptional challenge for designers. Working in a space that’s already been designed can sometimes limit what you can do. For example, building interiors in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s featured a lot of dark, heavy materials. Those buildings are dated, and many of them are due for major rehab work.

Contemporary designs are visually light. They try to make the most of natural lighting and favor open floor plans. Dark woods, stone and granite don’t do a good job of transmitting natural light, so designers look for substitute materials that can transform the space and create a more contemporary look.

Designers are turning to lighter colored marbles and composites to replace dark marble, dark wood and granite. They’re opening floor plans by removing interior walls and replacing them with glass dividers.

Retail redesigns are taking significant inspiration from the latest Apple store design. The new Apple footprint features soaring glass doors that open the entire retail space. This approach blurs the distinction between indoor and outdoor, and welcomes buyers into a unique retail space.

Another new innovation that will quickly make its appearance in redesigns is “invisible” glass. The term is a bit shocking – considering that glass is the ultimate transparent material – but so-called invisible glass is ultraclear, ultra white and looks fantastic in any application.

Another indispensable decorating tool for glass surfaces is Glassprimer™ glass paint. Glassprimer™ glass paint is specially formulated to bond to glass and other impervious surfaces. It can be color-matched to virtually any color available from any major paint manufacturer, so it can be integrated easily into virtually any decorating plan. Because Glassprimer™ glass paint is highly UV resistant, you can be confident that your glass paint project will look great year after year, even when the paint is exposed to direct sunlight.

Please visit our site to learn more about glass paint, and how you can incorporate it into your decorating plans.

Photo Credit: Local Louisville, via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

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Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters

In our ongoing series on iconic glass structures, we’ll look at China Central Television Headquarters (CCTV) in Beijing. The CCTV Headquarters makes heavy use of glass, and was designed and built over a period of eight years, between 2004 and 2012. The building is actually three buildings that have been joined together, and reflects a desire to eschew the standard height-based evaluation of modern commercial architecture.

Construction on the tower was delayed by a massive fire that ripped through an adjacent structure in 2009. The fire caused extensive damage to the building under construction. The CCTV building was nearly complete at the time of the fire, and pushed back the building’s completion by about three years. Read more

Glass: More than just a pretty façade

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Glass: More than just a pretty façade

Glass: More than just a pretty façade

There are a number of reasons to incorporate glass into your decorating plans. Glass has a lot going for it! Here are a few reasons to consider going with glass.

Transparency can do a lot to improve the appearance of a space. Going transparent fools the eye into believing that a space is larger than it is. The transparency of a material allows the viewer to “look through” a space. Objects are still objects, but you can reclaim the space (at least vicariously) that a transparent object takes up. Glass tables, walls, desks and other see-through items can really expand a space.

Glass allows the transmission of natural light. The human body literally craves natural light. Natural light helps regulate a person’s “body clock,” which is so important to health and well-being. Exposure to natural light helps regulate the body’s wake and sleep cycles, and the production of key hormones, chemicals and vitamins the body needs to stay healthy.

Another key benefit of glass in an interior design scheme is the regulation of sound. As it turns out, glass is a much better sound insulator than other common building materials. Wood, for example, is used commonly in both residential and commercial buildings. It’s used in structural components, walls, floors and doors. But wood isn’t a particularly good sound insulator. Sound penetrates wood relatively easily, which means that buildings require additional insulators to help dampen sound.

Controlling sound is important, whether you’re working with a residential or commercial space. While wood can reduce sound vibrations by something in the range of 15dB-20dB, a material like glass can reduce it by as much as 40dB – 45dB. That’s a huge difference!

Ironically, in a commercial space, glass provides better sound privacy than wood or drywall does. You can use specially formulated acoustical drywall, or add acoustic insulation, but that can add significant cost to a project, and may not produce measurably better results.

With a specialty paint like Glassprimer™ glass paint, you can also paint glass to change its appearance without changing its sound-cancelling properties. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be tinted to match virtually any major paint manufacturer’s paint palette, so you can safely and accurately incorporate it into your decorating plan.

If you’d like more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Camelia TWU, via Flickr.com