“Magic” turns out to be the best way to describe the effects that you can achieve when you add smart glass to the design and décor of your home. Technology has put at your fingertips – or even in response to your voice – the ability to choose at any moment what your windows and doors and skylights are doing in your home. Liquid crystal molecules, layered within the smart glass, respond to electric current by opening, dimming, or closing off the light that passes through them.
The impact on privacy, beauty, and outdoor enjoyment is profound and amazing. Windows, doors, and skylights now can be controlled to admit as much or as little light as your mood desires. Our southern coastal sun can be regulated to prevent fading your furniture and drapes. And those drapes themselves? They are now optional. The privacy and sun protection provided by smart glass makes curtains and drapery a purely esthetic decision, because their role is now performed more effectively than ever by smart glass applications, such as eGlass.
Switchable Sunlight
Changing from transparent to frosted white at the touch of a button, or even on voice command to Alexa, your windows and doors can be converted from full view to full privacy. And every degree of light or dark in between can be imparted gradually, even automatically, thanks to smart glass products, such as SolarSmart, that “read” the sun and regulate their tint automatically.
Privacy, light, and the heat that comes from the greenhouse effect of sunlight through glass can all be controlled dynamically, without manually tilting blinds, lowering shades, or sweeping curtains aside. The magic is in the glass. It can be called upon at will, or it can appear automatically as the day progresses or as the evening approaches.
Right for the Time and Place
Not only can you control the design effects provided by your windows, doors, and skylights, but you can also be confident in the good taste you exhibit by doing so. The indoor-outdoor atmosphere of a home is certainly a characteristic of the best coastal home designs, down through the generations of coastal living. Porches, verandas, and piazzas play a role in the history of useful design in our region.
You also are taking a dynamic part in the progress of design for coastal homes when you actively control the transparency of your windows, doors, and skylights. One of the most significant turning points in home design occurred when people began to decide to leave behind the hemmed-in, ornamental, deeply shaded world of the Victorian home. Smart glass is the most up-to-date expression originating from this turning point.
The Ultimate Realization
Realizing that in a land of beauty, the window should be a picture frame for the wonders of nature, rather than an opening barricaded by layers of heavy curtains – this was the beginning of modern design. From craftsman and mission styles, through midcentury modern, and on to today’s informed, eclectic, cosmopolitan style, the consistent characteristic has been the awakening of the home to a familiar relationship between outdoors and indoors.
Today this relationship is yours to command, or to enjoy automatically, thanks to the magic of smart glass. Let’s get together and talk about what it can mean for your home or office.
