Sliding windows make an excellent addition for bedrooms and living rooms with wide open spaces because they allow for a lot of sunlight and air to pass through. They can be styled, coloured, and sized for your own personal preference while providing strength and protection to your home.
Sliding window features
Before we go into the many personalised customizations you can apply to sliders, let's take a look at the standard features that homeowners know and love them for:
- Few moving parts.
The simple mechanism of sliding thick nylon rollers along a track make these windows arguably the easiest to use with minimal effort. - Low-maintenance.
The windows are removable and easy to clean. - Suits most interior and exterior home styles.
Sliders are popular because they blend in with the architecture of most home structures as well as the interior room layouts of most homes. - Use rollers to slide along a track.
The rollers are usually made of nylon because they are easy to roll while providing a lot of grip along all window frame types (i.e. aluminum, fiberglass, vinyl, wood frames, and others). - Interlocking shutting system.
When shut the sliders latch on to one another using interlocking handles to prevent wind infiltration. - Ideal for working space.
You'll often find sliders over the kitchen sink or a study desk because they don't take up any space within their range of motion. - Lock/unlock feature.
Sliders are ideal for family homes because their locks are located too high up for children to reach, providing protection from intruders and safety for children. - Weather sealed frame.
Because of the range of window frames that are available, sliders are a great insulator for any home.
Sliding window options
The capabilities of sliding windows do not stop there, a range of custom options are available for different uses and tastes. Glazings, sizes, configurations, grid styles, glass types, and colours can offer you a unique combination that give your home a look of its own.
- Different types of glazing (i.e. number of panes, types of glass): Insulated glass, low-emissivity (low-e) coated, and spectrally selective coated windows are able to block heat from entering the home while allowing the same amount of visible light pass through. Tints are another good insulation technique but they compromise visible light in the process.
- Different sizes and configurations to choose from.
Larger sizes (6" x 6" and up) of sliders often come with a row of fixed windows underneath to allow for a wider range of sight and maximum sunlight penetration. - 3-lite sliders.
These sliders can be divided into halves, quarters, or thirds of the size of the master frame. Because each pane is the fraction of the size of standard variations, 3-lite sliders provide a wider opening to the outside and more air penetration. - Fire retardant: Window frames made of metal trim or PVC (vinyl) could have at least a 45-minute fire rating.
- Different grid styles to choose from such as colonial, cross, diamond, prairie, double prairie, perimeter, and double perimeter.
- Different types of glass to choose from including laminated, tempered, leaded, beveled, acrylic block, obscure, and hurricane impact resistant glass.
- Different interior and exterior colours.
- Right/left-handed.
