PriWatt film at a private residence in Boca Bridges, Boca Raton
Three days, two trades, and no visible edge
An ultra-modern house is an unforgiving place to apply anything. Clean lines and large panes mean there is nothing to hide a detail behind, and a film that stops a few millimetres short of the frame is the first thing anybody sees.
Roughly 250 square feet of PriWatt film went in over three days, and the glaziers took the frames off first, so the film could be carried right to the edge of the glass.
Why removing the frame changes the result
Film is applied to the pane. If the frame stays on, the film has to stop where the frame begins. That means a hand-cut line running parallel to the frame, a few millimetres inside it, all the way round.
- That line is visible in the private state as a clear border around a frosted panel
- It is visible in the clear state too, as a faint edge where the layer starts
- It is the edge most exposed to cleaning water, because it sits proud of the glass instead of under a frame
- And it is the hardest part of the job to keep straight, on the one line the eye will follow
Take the frame off, apply the film past the sightline, and put the frame back: the edge is under the frame where an edge belongs, the switchable area runs to the visible boundary of the glass, and there is no line to keep straight because there is no line.
The cost is a second trade on a domestic project and a day. Worth asking for on a house where the glazing is the architecture. Worth not paying for on a partition nobody looks at closely.
What a new-build house buys this for
Plots are close together
A new development puts large glazed elevations a short distance from the next house. The glass was the selling point and the proximity was not mentioned.
Nothing to hang
A house designed around clean lines has nowhere to put a blind. Curtains on a full-height pane are the thing that dates the interior first.
Daylight is the point
The private state scatters light instead of blocking it, so a room closed to view is still a bright room. That is the whole difference from a shutter.
Worth adding: PriWatt film also exists in a non-adhesive form, to be laminated between two panes instead of applied to one. That is the answer for glazing that is genuinely wet, inside a shower and not beside one, and it is the same technology in a different construction. See shower and wet rooms and glass or film.
Before quoting a house
- Which rooms, and which state each should hold with no power: bathrooms and bedrooms usually private, living space usually clear
- Whether the frames can come off, which decides both the finish and the price
- Where a tail can leave each pane and reach a transformer in a house that is already finished
- How it is switched, and whether the house has an automation system the glass should join
- Panel sizes, since several small panes cost more per square foot than a few large ones
The published ranges per product are on pricing, with what a square-foot figure includes and what it leaves out.
Specified on this project
PriWatt PDLC switchable film
Self-adhesive film applied to glass already in the building. Private unpowered, clear when switched.
Residential
Bathrooms, glazed stairwells, terraces and railings.
Switchable windows
Exterior glazing, where solar gain matters as much as privacy.
A project like this one
A house where the glazing is the architecture, and a film edge would be the first thing anyone noticed. 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.
