News | Lantern Roofs Glass Options

Date: 28/10/19

Lantern roofs are an extremely popular home improvement product these days and it’s easy to see why. With the rise in popularity of flat roof extensions and both traditional and modern orangeries, a lantern roof is the perfect way to enhance both of these living spaces.

Lantern roofs flood the room below with lots of natural light and also add the ‘wow’ factor. Of course, a lantern is all about the glass and so lantern roof glass options are very important. To enable a lantern rooflight to be thermally efficient, a glazing material must be selected that deflects heat from the sun in the Summer and retains the warmth from heating appliances in the Winter. Obviously, it is also crucial that the glass allows the maximum amount of light into your home.
Here’s a handy guide to help you understand the various lantern roof glass options available to you so that you can choose the best lantern roof glass for your extension or orangery.

Lantern Roof Glass Colour Options

From a visual point of view, there are 4 choices of lantern roof glass options:

1. Clear lantern roof glass
2. Blue lantern roof glass
3. Aqua lantern roof glass
4. Brown lantern roof glass

The colour of lantern roof glass that you choose will have a subtle impact on the light within your conservatory. For example, if you choose clear lantern roof glass and it is a grey, gloomy, cloudy day, this is exactly what you will see through the glass of your lantern roof. However, if you choose blue lantern roof glass, the sky above your lantern roof glass will always look a touch brighter than it really is – very handy for helping you to ignore the often-grey English skies!

Lantern Roof Glass Performance Options

As well as considering the colour of your lantern roof glass, you may also want to look at the performance of each glass colour. While they are all quite similar in terms of performance, you may wish to understand what those differences mean.

Here is a handy guide to lantern roof glass options in terms of performance:

• Light Transmission – This refers to the percentage of light transmitted through the lantern roof glass – also known as a sealed unit.
• Solar Rejection – This is the proportion of the sun’s energy that is rejected or not allowed to enter your home through your lantern roof glass. The higher the percentage the better it is at reflecting away the sun’s energy.
• U Value w/m2 – This is a measure of how good the material is at preventing heat loss to the outside. So, for example, if you have your heating on in winter, you would not want the heat to be lost through your lantern roof glass. The lower the U Value figure, the more thermally efficient it is. 
• UV Protection - The higher the percentage, the lower the possibility of furniture and fabrics fading. This becomes more important if you have large lantern roofs where a lot of natural light is hitting the furniture in your room below.
• Self-Cleaning – This one is quite self-explanatory – all Ultraframe lantern roof glass is self-cleaning, meaning that you shouldn’t need to clean your roof lanterns yourself because the lantern roof glass does it for you. How does this work? Self-cleaning lantern roof glass words in 2 stages:

1. A special coating on the lantern roof glass harnesses the power of UV daylight to break down any dirt on your lantern rooflights.
2. This coating has a second function when it rains – rather than rain forming on the lantern roof glass in droplets like it would on uncoated glass, it spreads right across the surface of the lantern roof glass – taking with it the dirt that has been broken down by the daylight.

You should now understand a lot more about lantern roof glass options – both in terms of how the glass colour can make a difference from a visual point of view, and also the various lantern roof glass performance factors and what they mean.

All Ultraframe lantern roof glass boasts excellent performance properties, regardless of which colour of lantern roof glass you choose. This means that no matter which colour of glass you choose, you can have total peace of mind that it will not only look beautiful, but that it will also perform at the highest levels.
If you do still have any further questions about lantern roof glass options, please do feel free to contact us using the link at the top of the website and one of our friendly, knowledgeable team will get back to you as soon as possible.

We hope that this handy guide to lantern roof glass options has helped you to make your decision. We hope that you enjoy a home filled with natural light and beautiful views of the sky above through your new lantern skylights.

View all news