A conservatory, orangery or glass extension is a great way to gain extra space, but you may have concerns about whether a conservatory will be cold in the winter months or boiling and too bright in the summer.

The fact that a conservatory is made mainly of glass including a partial or full glass roof, obviously means that you will be able to enjoy a light-filled space with views of your garden, but without the right kind of glass in place, you may experience your glass extension being too hot as well as a glare when the sun is shining.  You may also find that if your glass doesn’t have a superior UV filter, your furniture and soft furnishings will fade, and the sun’s rays could also be harmful to your skin. On the reverse side, in the autumn and winter when it becomes colder and you turn the heating on, you may have heat escaping out of the glass too fast, leaving your glass room far too cold to enjoy and your heating bill sky high.

The glass will make up the majority of your new room and thankfully now there are far superior glass technologies available to combat these issues, helping to control the temperature and comfort levels while you enjoy your conservatory. There are lots of different options on the market, so it can be confusing and there are huge variations in the performance available.

Here are the things to look out for when choosing your conservatory glass:

1. Energy Efficiency – You need to make sure that your conservatory glass is solar controlled, to limit the amount of heat that passes through the glass.  This will help keep the heat of the sun to a minimum as well as ensure that the heat from your central heating is also kept inside your glass extension. This will keep your room comfortable meaning there are fewer requirements for air conditioning and heating reducing the cost of your energy bills. Different brands and types of glass will offer varying levels of solar control, you will need a glass that offers a very low U-value to get the maximum efficiency.
2. Light Reduction Technology – Good conservatory glass will offer light reflection properties, to reflect a percentage of the sunlight back out of your conservatory.  This will give you a light room without the glare in summer and maximise the light available in the autumn and winter when there is less sunlight. You want your glass to reflect at least 70% of the sun’s rays, the higher the better, without having to add tints.
3. UV filtering – In order to protect your family and your décor, conservatory glass needs to offer high-performance UV filtering to stop the harmful UV rays from the sun. UV can be very harmful so when choosing a glass you want to block as much as you can; the only way to block all UV rays is to have a solid roof and no windows.
4. Low maintenance glass protection – You want your glass extension windows and glass roof to stay looking their best for as long as possible, without lots of cleaning. A glass protection coating reduces the amount of staining and dirt that sticks to the surface of the glass, meaning they stay cleaner for longer.  It will also make cleaning much less work as dirt will lift with less effort.

Our ‘New Generation Glass’ ticks all of the boxes

Exclusive to Room Outside, our revolutionary ‘New Generation Glass’ (NGG) utilises state of the art technology to control the temperature of your glass room and is designed specifically for the British climate. We were the very first company to exclusively introduce the revolutionary solar controlled Wonderglass™ into the UK market from Four Seasons Sunrooms in the USA in 1999. This has now been developed further and we believe that our ‘New Generation Glass’ leads the field today, with its far superior specification, reflecting heat and light back to its source to keep your glass room at the optimum temperature throughout the seasons. NGG offers unsurpassed solar control alongside outstanding thermal performance, making this the best product in its class. These temperature control properties combined with, light-reflecting and UV reduction technology as well as our self-cleaning protective coating makes our glass perfect for the extreme demands of a room built entirely of glass. Read more about our ‘New Generation Glass’ here.