L’Oréal USA specifies PriWatt film for its West Coast headquarters
A finished office, and a fit-out that could not stop it working
L’Oréal USA’s new West Coast headquarters was designed and built before the switchable glazing was specified. That is the ordinary case, and the one that decides the product before anything else is discussed. The glass was in. The building was occupied. Whatever went in had to go onto what was already there.
PriWatt PDLC switchable film was applied to the designated glass surfaces by the installer’s Los Angeles team, after a site survey and against a schedule agreed with L’Oréal’s facilities group so the floor kept operating around the work.
Why a survey comes before a price
On a retrofit the drawing is the building, not a proposal, and the things that decide the job are already fixed. A survey is where they are found, instead of discovered on the day.
- What the existing pane is: thickness, laminated or monolithic, and whether it is coated, because film goes onto the inboard face
- Where power can reach each panel, and by what route, in a frame nobody designed to carry a cable
- Which surfaces are actually wanted switchable, usually fewer than the ones that are glazed
- How the floor is used hour by hour, since the work happens around meetings and not in place of them
None of that is unusual and all of it is cheaper answered early. It is the same list that goes into a quotation for any occupied building.
What the film does in a corporate office
The same thing it does anywhere, and the reason it suits a headquarters is what it does not do. It adds no object to the room. There is no track above the glass, no stack of fabric at the jamb, nothing that dates or that has to be specified to match. In a building where the interior is part of how the company presents itself, that is usually the argument that decides it.
Private in under a second
Switched from clear to opaque faster than a person crosses the room, with nothing moving and nothing to hear.
Daylight either way
The private state scatters light instead of stopping it, so a closed room is still a daylit one. That is the difference from a blind.
Tested before handover
Every panel was switched and checked after installation, the point at which a wiring fault is a morning’s work and not a callback.
The decision behind the product
PDLC in normal mode is private with no power and clear when switched. That is the right way round for a room that is closed more often than it is open: a boardroom in constant use, an HR office, a room where the default should be discretion.
Where a floor is transparent most of the working day and closed for an hour at a time, the answer is the other way up: reverse mode is clear unpowered and draws current only while the meeting is on. Which of the two suits a given room is the first question on any of these projects, and it is answered as a behaviour, never as a product name.
Specified on this project
PriWatt PDLC switchable film
Self-adhesive film applied to glass already in the building. Private unpowered, clear when switched.
Offices and boardrooms
Partitions, meeting rooms and executive offices — the application this belongs to.
Office partitions
How a glazed run is built: where the joints fall, and how one transformer serves a wall.
A project like this one
A headquarters fit-out, a floor already occupied, or glazed partitions that were built without a privacy answer. The glass and the film are made in Pompano Beach, Florida, and nothing here is priced off a rate card. Send dimensions, or a photograph with the sizes written on it, and the quote comes back against your panels. If you are not that far along, book the call.
