The demand has increased for safety glass doors in modern Indian homes because glass adds spaciousness and blurs the boundaries between the indoors and the outdoors. Factors like strength, safety, cost and area of application play a key role in deciding between the different types of safety glass for your doors, which mainly comprise the toughened and the laminated varieties. This all-you-need-to-know guide will give you all the info you need about both these types and their respective applications.

 What is safety glass?

• Safety glass is designed to reduce the risk of injury in case of breakage. Unlike standard glass, the safety version is less likely to break, and even if it breaks, it will not fracture into sharp shards but will disintegrate into smaller granular pieces.
• During the manufacturing process, standard glass is subjected to a heat treatment process which increases its internal strength so that it is resistant to a strong impact.
• One can improve the security of the home and protect it from burglary by replacing standard glass with the safety type in the external doors.

What are the different types of safety glass?

• It comes in two types: fully toughened and laminated.
• When a standard sheet of glass is subjected to high heat and pressure, it forms fully toughened glass, which is four to five times stronger than standard glass.

• Laminated glass is formed by binding two or more layers of standard glass with a flexible interlayer under high heat and pressure. The local name for it is sandwich glass.
• Both these types of safety glass have excellent optical clarity and are available in different thicknesses and tints.

What are the pros and cons of toughened glass doors?

Pros:
 

• Fully toughened glass is resistant to shattering because it has the capacity to bend without breaking.
• It is the most affordable type of safety glass door.

Cons:
 

• To make fully toughened glass, the standard glass has to be pre-cut and edged, and all the holes drilled, before it goes through the heat treatment process. Since toughened glass cannot be cut, the sizing of the glass should be completed before toughening the glass.
• Although toughened glass doors are long-lasting and durable, in case of breakage, the entire door has to be replaced.

Cost:
The cost of toughened glass ranges between ₹125 and ₹260 per square foot for different thicknesses of glass.

What are the pros and cons of laminated glass doors?

Pros:
 

• The biggest advantage of laminated glass is that it includes a flexible polyvinyl butyral (PVB) interlayer, which holds the glass together even if the glass is subjected to high impact. Therefore, in case of breakage, instead of shattering, the glass holds together.
• Additionally, the PVB interlayer enhances the strength and stability of glass. Some types of laminated glass are burglar-proof and bulletproof as well, and can handle the impact of a bullet without shattering. This is because the PVB layer makes standard glass nearly 100 times tougher than ordinary glass.
• A laminated glass door can block up to 97 per cent of harmful ultraviolet (UV radiation) and also protects furnishings and rugs from the fading usually caused by the UV rays in sunshine.

• Another advantage is that laminated glass doors enhance the energy efficiency of the home by controlling the amount of heat transferred from outdoors into the house in summer, or the other way round in winter.
• Laminated glass doors have very good sound insulation properties.
• Unlike fully toughened glass, the sides and edges of laminated glass can be cut and polished after laminating.

Cons:
 

• A laminated glass door is costlier than a fully toughened one.
• Another minus is that it is very heavy because it is composed of two panes of glass fused together.

Cost:
The cost of laminated glass ranges between ₹200 and ₹345 per square foot.

Where to use which type of safety glass door?

• If you are looking for strength and want to reduce the risk of injury in the event of breakage, then go for toughened glass for the internal and external doors of your home.
• A laminated glass door offers optimum security, very good UV-resistance, sound insulation and improved energy efficiency of your home. It is best suited for the entrance and secondary doors that open on to the garden or other outdoor areas.

Note: One can attack and break a toughened glass door with a single blow of a hammer. On the other hand it takes at least two or three blows to break laminated glass and even after that, it is very difficult to cut a hole through it.