When Were Glass Windows Invented?

Glass, as a material, is rare in nature. Usually, it comes in the form of obsidian – which is entirely black. Synthetic glass first came to be widespread in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3500 BCE, and came to be used for vases and cups thousands of years after that. Glass windows, on the other hand, came much later. The ancient Romans used them, sporadically, in the more upmarket villas and government buildings – though their optical qualities were far behind what we might expect today. In certain places, like churches, this difficulty became an opportunity: stained glass windows allowed for the depiction of certain religious scenes. In this setting, transparency didn’t matter. The earliest forms of window glass were ‘broad sheet’. These were made by first blowing a tube of glass, and then cutting off one side and rolling the whole thing flat. The difficulty of manufacturing glass windows made them something of a status symbol – and this continued right up to Tudor England, where only the wealthiest households could afford windows of a decent size. In Europe, the Italian renaissance left no aspect of culture or industry untouched. Windows there became taller and sleeker, and separated by mullions and transoms (the wooden crossbeams which run across the surface of a window). As time went by, these elements were made progressively narrower – so that more light could pass through the window.

What Was Used in Windows Before Glass Was Invented?

While the modern window might seem like a pretty simple contraption, it’s actually made from dozens of carefully-engineered parts. Double-glazed windows …

Standard Window Sizes: Explained

Confused about window sizes and standard window dimensions? Read on and we’ll explain everything you need to know about sizes when …

PVCu or uPVC – What’s the Difference?

If you’ve been shopping for exterior doors or windows recently, you might have come across two similar terms: PVCu and uPVC, …

What U-Value Should Windows Have?

When you’re shopping for a new set of windows, there’s one metric that you’re almost certain to encounter, and that’s the …

20 Ways You’re Wasting Energy

Homes today are more energy-efficient than they’ve ever been. They’re also filled with more energy-draining items than ever before. You might …

How Much Do Curtains Help with Heat Retention?

If you’re looking to save money on your energy bills, then you should view your windows as a priority. A significant …

What Are Trickle Vents For (and do you need them?)

Over the past few decades, considerable advancements have been made in the art of draught-exclusion. Modern windows are airtight, which is …

Why Do Birds Fly into Windows (and how can you stop it?)

Many modern conveniences that benefit us are harmful to the animal kingdom, who can’t understand that roads are hazardous or anti-freeze …

How to Maximise Natural Light in Your Home

It’s a glorious day outside but you have one room in your house that just seems to remain dull and dark. …

Applying Plain Packaging Rules to Household Chemicals

On the 20th of May 2017 legislation requiring all tobacco packaging to be “uniformly green with large images showing the harmful …

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the website is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages visted in an anonymous form.
_hjAbsoluteSessionInProgress	30 minutes	No description available.
_hjFirstSeen	30 minutes	This is set by Hotjar to identify a new user’s first session. It stores a true/false value, indicating whether this was the first time Hotjar saw this user. It is used by Recording filters to identify new user sessions.
_hjid	1 year	This cookie is set by Hotjar. This cookie is set when the customer first lands on a page with the Hotjar script. It is used to persist the random user ID, unique to that site on the browser. This ensures that behavior in subsequent visits to the same site will be attributed to the same user ID.
_hjIncludedInPageviewSample	2 minutes	No description available.
_hjTLDTest	session	No description available.