What Glass is Best for a Door Window?

When you add a glass kit to a commercial door, you allow light to pass through. This customization creates a brighter work area for employees and customers. There are also security benefits to including glass windows in your doors. Glass storefront doors make retail spaces open, colorful, and inviting.

If you decide to incorporate glass into your commercial door design, you may have a few choices to make. One of the most important is choosing the right glass for your door. Here, we’ll go over a few of your options and when each choice might be ideal.

Clear Tempered Glass

Tempered glass is available in all of our light kits and our glass storefront doors. Clear tempered glass is simply tempered glass without any sort of tinting. There are many benefits to choosing tempered glass. That’s why we’ve made this our primary offering. 

If you choose tempered glass, you get a special heat-treated glass that is much safer than other glass types. This glass is exceptionally strong and resistant to breaking. When it does break, it shatters into small, harmless pieces. It’s much less likely to cause injury than standard glass that breaks into shards with sharp edges.

Tempered glass can also withstand temperatures of up to 475 degrees. That makes it a perfect choice for kitchens and other spaces that could heat up significantly. 

Clear tempered glass truly lives up to its name. It is absolutely crystal clear. This transparency makes it ideal for storefronts and other purposes where you want to allow perfect visibility.

Gray Tempered Glass

Gray tempered glass has all of the features and benefits of clear tempered glass, with a slight tint. This tint prevents a small amount of light from moving through the window. Many customers choose gray tempered glass for areas where full sun would be too hot or bright.

There are also some decorative benefits to gray glass. It gives spaces a very modern, sleek look. Gray glass can blend into the architecture of contemporary office buildings well, especially those that are made from steel. 

Insulated Glass

While there are a few types of insulated glass, the product is made from two thick sheets of glass with a space between them for insulation. Insulated glass has many beneficial properties making it a great choice for many of CDF Distributors’ customers.

If noise is a concern, consider insulated glass. This material has excellent soundproofing benefits. That’s because most sounds can’t penetrate two panels of glass and the air space between them.

Insulated glass offers great temperature control as well. Our insulated glass doors don’t allow outside air penetration, protecting your ideal indoor temperature. This energy-saving feature also means lower utility bills.

Insulated glass helps deter criminals, as it takes a significant amount of power to break through insulated glass windows. Many criminals are unlikely to spend the time required to break through that glass to access your property.

Fire Rated Glass

People are often surprised to learn that we can build fire-rated doors with glass or light kits. We can do this because the glass in these doors is also fire-rated. It can withstand heat and fire for the same amount of time the doors can.

There are several types of fire-rated glass. These include tempered, wired, and pyran platinum.

Wired glass is made from a glass panel with a wired interior. The wire holds the glass and window in place if the fire temperature becomes hot enough to melt or break the glass.

Pyran platinum is a ceramic glass product. It is attractive, environmentally friendly, and fire-resistant. It is also impact-resistant and doesn’t break under thermal shock.

Glass Size and Placement

Once you select the ideal glass material, you’ll have to choose where it will go. Our glass kits include small 12x12 squares, medium-sized 6x27 rectangles, half-glass panels, and full glass. Then there are glass storefront doors that are made almost entirely of the glass you choose. 

The Best Choices in Door Glass

At CDF Distributors, we have a wide selection of doors and light kits in our inventory. We’d love to work with you to build a door that has the perfect window for your company’s needs. Contact us with any questions or place an order.