The Difference Between Insulating Glass and Laminated Glass – Which Solution is Best For Your Window?

What is laminated Glass?

Laminated glass is comprised of two pieces of glass attached to each other using PVB film. The film doesn’t harm the window’s transparency, and provides the advantage of acoustic isolation, along with maintaining the window’s safety. The thickness of the glass is very much up to you, since a wide variety exists. The thicker the glass is, the more potential it has to become a large and wide window, due to the strength contributed by the thickness. These glass windows provide an efficient barrier against burglary since they are very hard to break, and thanks to the film, they barely crack.

Standard film is 0.38 mm thick, and Double film is 0.76 mm thick and is able to provide excellent acoustic performance. In order to improve the acoustic isolation even more, combinations of glasses with different thickness block out sound waves with different wavelengths. For example, 4 mm glass attached with 0.76 mm film to a 5 mm glass.

This method of attachment enables creating different glazing designs, like attaching stripes design to a transparent glass, resulting in an elegant look with a concealing effect and an overall safer solution.

Laminated glass has lower thermal isolation performance than Isolation glass, which is manufactured explicitly for such purposes. That is why it is less suitable for higher elevation locations, where temperatures can reach freezing lows during the winter, and condensation can accumulate.

What is an Insulated Glass (IGU)?

Insulated glass, is made up of two layers of glass with an air-space between them. The space is created using a “spacer” which also makes sure no moisture gathers up in the space so that the window’s transparency won’t be harmed. The air caught up between the glasses grants a better ability to isolate temperature, the bigger the space –  the better the isolation. The air can be replaced with a noble gas, such as Argon which improves the isolation.

Using Isolation glass with Steel Frame creates a challenge because of its minimalistic characteristics. The “spacer” used to create the space adds a “rough” element to it, and requires maximal precision in order to maintain a clean and minimal appearance. In order to ensure an optimal match between the Isolation glass and the Steel Framing, we at Tuval-Minimal use thicker profiles (W-500FR, W-20). The higher cost of the Isolation glass and the thicker profiles make a pricey solution, compared to a Steel Frame solution with Laminated glass.

Tuval-Minimal works in cooperation with a German firm creating a minimalistic “spacer” (warm-Edge Spacer), which maintains the needed space between the glasses, but is significantly slimmer. Thanks to this solution, Tuval’s windows look sharper and have a cleaner appearance, even when working with windows with Isolation glass. Tuval offers a solution with the best of both worlds: a sleek and sharp design, with state of the art isolation and operation.