Painted Glass

Three Different Products Called "Painted Glass"

Back-Painted Lacquer

An opaque lacquer applied to the rear face and cured, so the colour is seen through the glass and the visible surface is polished glass. That is what gives back-painted glass its depth — the colour sits behind a layer of glass rather than on top of it.

It is an interior product. Lacquers are not formulated for sustained ultraviolet exposure or for weather, and the bond can be affected by moisture reaching the painted face. On a kitchen splashback or a wall panel it performs excellently; on an exterior elevation it is the wrong product.

Ceramic Frit

A ceramic ink is applied and then fired into the glass surface during tempering. The colour becomes part of the glass, fused at high temperature.

That makes it permanent, ultraviolet stable and suitable for exterior use. Frit is what spandrel panels on a curtain wall are made with, and what is used for patterned shading, bird-friendly markings and exterior graphics. It costs more than lacquer and it is the only one of the three that belongs on a facade.

Because the firing happens during tempering, all cutting and drilling must be finished first.

Digital Printing

Ceramic ink applied by a digital printer, allowing photographic images, gradients and complex patterns rather than flat colour. Then fired in the same way, so the result is equally durable.

Printed glass can also be built into a laminate, with the image sitting between the plies where it is permanently protected.

The Substrate Decides the Colour

This is the specification point that gets missed, and it is the reason colour matching goes wrong.

Ordinary clear float glass has a green cast from its iron content, and you are looking through that glass at the colour behind it. A white back-painted panel on standard clear glass does not read white — it reads faintly green, and the effect is stronger on thicker glass.

Pale colours, whites, greys and any attempt to match a specific reference need a low-iron substrate. Strong dark colours are more forgiving. If a colour has been chosen from a swatch, ask for a sample on the actual substrate before committing — on a large splashback that is the difference between right and nearly right.

Where Painted Glass Is Used

These describe the kind of work each area brings rather than any specific client project.

Kitchen splashbacks — citywide residential. Back-painted toughened glass, low-iron where the colour is pale. A single sheet with no grout lines, which is most of the appeal. Cut-outs for sockets must be made before tempering.

Spandrel panels — Long Island City, Downtown Brooklyn, Midtown. Ceramic frit, because the panel is on the outside of the building and has to survive there. Heat build-up behind spandrel glass is a real consideration and affects the specification.

Office and retail interiors — Tribeca, SoHo, Midtown. Back-painted partitions, writable surfaces and branded panels. Digital printing where an image rather than a colour is wanted.

Bird-friendly and patterned glazing — new construction citywide. Frit patterns that make large areas of glass visible to birds. This is increasingly a design requirement rather than an option on new buildings.

Tell us the colour reference, the size, and whether the glass is interior or exterior — that last answer decides which of the three products you actually need. We supply and fabricate across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and throughout Northern New Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.