Residential window film for IR/heat rejection? | Festool Owners Group

Since we lost all of the trees on the west side of the house, summers have been a bear.  Doubly so now that my wife stays home all day with kids instead of leaving to go to an office.

I'm strongly considering putting IR/heat rejecting film on the glass of our west-facing windows, and left a voicemail for a local company that uses 3M products to come out to provide an estimate.  Window film is my preferred route compared to replacement windows since the windows themselves are otherwise in decent shape (wood single pane with a storm window or wood double-pane picture windows).

Does anyone have experience with 3M, Gila, or other brands of residential window film, either DIY or pro installed?  DIY appears to be $1-2/sf plus time spent cleaning and installing (which sounds relaxing and/or miserable depending on my mood), pro installed looks to be possibly $10/sf and up.

Thanks in advance for input! I installed film once years ago.  I don’t know how well it worked because I so disliked how it looked that I scraped it off the following day.

I will make a couple of suggestions:

1.  Do just one window and the observe how it looks from the outside.

2.  Consider the alternatives.

The alternative I like is the honeycomb window shades. They come in single and double versions.  They are available as light filtering or light blocking versions.  The newer versions have no cords. You just raise it or lower it as you wish.

Of course if you like how the film looks, then ignore what I wrote.

If you box in the ends it will add insulation.


We already have double-honeycomb shades in both of the bedrooms, one set Hunter Douglas light filtering, the other Bali blackout. The kitchen has blackout spring-loaded roller shades that block light but not heat, and the dining and family rooms have light filtering curtains or roller shades. 

All of the windows radiate heat in the summer that you can feel, even with the cellular shades drawn.

We have a beautiful backyard (less so since we lost the trees, but still nice to look out at) and the last thing my wife wants while staying home with the kids is to feel like she's in a literal windowless prison, thus the desire to filter UV and IR.

I'll definitely heed the advice to only start with one window before going all out, viewing both inside and outside; I don't need our house giving off Ponch and Jon vibes with a bunch of silvery windows. We're thinking of either a retractable awning or a pergola for the patio, which is about 16 of the 60 feet of the rear of the house.

Ultimately, we're probably going to end up with a combination of removing and replacing all of the attic insulation (I should have done this after the storm with the hole in the roof and made insurance pay for it), window film and/or low-e replacement windows, a pergola or retractable awning for the patio, and the generous application of time, sun, and water to the replacement trees.

Here's the before, storm damage, and current (minus the sun, since it's 8 PM) for what we used to have for shade.  It's been an energy nightmare since.

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I had heat film on all the windows of another home that I owned.  The film worked wonderfully to drop IR and UV light significantly.  My HVAC bills dropped by a good 20% annually.  The downside was that my plants in the living room started dying almost immediately.  I had to run out and buy a grow light and a timer to get the plants back to normal. 

That said, I had a client that wanted me to install a semi-custom closet a few years ago.  I noted to the couple that one window in the walk-in closet should be covered by a film immediately to prevent hanging clothing from being discolored due to the intensity of the light coming in.  They were quite happy with that advice. Ouch! that doesn't even look like the same place. That other house is there in the before, but you have to look for it. The now version is much more stark.

I have a giant Maple tree in the neighbor's front yard, just across the line. It is diagonally southwest of my front porch, in the perfect path of the afternoon/evening sun. If that thing was "lost" to a storm/tornado, we would both likely suffer massive damage.

As mentioned, awnings can do a lot, but they definitely have a "look", probably more so than any tint film you could ever find. It just depends on what you like.
Maybe there is something that is reflective of the UV/IR without "looking" reflective (silver/mirrored)? Well, I've been a fan of 3M for over 50 years because I worked in their engineering department for 8 years...but when I applied film to the windows in our sunroom, (that seems like an oxymoron), I decided on Gila film. It's worked well and really cuts down on the heat generated. The only issue is that the surface of the film is soft so you really don't want to clean it very often and from the outside it has this silver reflectance that makes me think I'm in the middle of the business district in Manhattan.

I like the results but I really don't like the look. I've noticed recently that Decorative Film has some heat blocking films and some are available in a blue tint that may diminish the "office building in Manhattan" look.
https://www.decorativefilm.com/ultra-ultrablock-heat-blocking-films