How to Protect Your Home from Arizona’s Intense UV Rays
Arizona is known for its rugged beauty, its wonderful winters, and, yes, its sweltering summers. People think they understand, but it’s tough to grapple with the reality of it until you’ve experienced it firsthand. Now, thankfully, air conditioning means we can live comfortably and safely indoors during those tougher months, but that sun is still shining year-round, and heat isn’t the only thing to be concerned about. You’ve undoubtedly seen a favorite chair fade next to the window or a section of your hardwood floors losing their luster over the years. The culprit: UV. This time on the Budget Blinds of Scottsdale and Fountain Hills blog, we’re talking about UV – how it can affect your home and what you can do about it.
What Are UV Rays Exactly?
Ultraviolet (UV) light is a type of electromagnetic radiation with shorter wavelengths than visible light. This means that UV light has a higher frequency than visible light. This means that while we cannot see UV light, it is still shining down causing sunburns, as well as damaging paint jobs and furniture.
So if they cause damage, as we’ve gone over, how do we block them and protect our homes?
Window Coverings, Window Film, Tinted Windows and …Rugs?
The UV rays that come blasting into your home all find their way inside through your windows! Standard window glass is your first line of defense, as it can block out two of the three types of UV rays (specifically UV-B and UV-C). UV-A still finds its way through, however. So how do you stop those? Let’s start with the windows.
Window Coverings
Properly covering your windows is the most cost-effective way to protect your home from excess UV rays. Some coverings, such as solar shades, can block up to 99% of UV while still letting in light. Window coverings also come in a variety of styles, from the aforementioned solar shades to cellular shades, Roman shades, and beyond. Adding a physical barrier between your windows and your home interior is a huge step in blocking out the damaging UV rays. Here at Budget Blinds, we want you to have total control over your window coverings so you have the final say in style and even opacity!
Tinted Windows
If you are looking for a more permanent defense against UV rays, you can invest in fully tinted windows. Replacing windows can be costly, no doubt, so opting for tinted windows better give you something, right? Tinted windows are made of glass with coats of incredibly thin layers of metallic oxides – so small they’re invisible to the naked eye (but!) strong enough to block out UV rays and help insulate your home. This extra insulation power makes them especially powerful here in Arizona.
Rugs?
Ok, ok, ok, hold on a second, hear us out. Window coverings and treatments are an excellent way to protect your interiors from UV rays. Stopping the UV at its source – well, where it enters the home, at least, is going to give the most protection. But in cases where maybe that’s not what you want? You need to have a way to protect the furniture and floors affected by the window. That’s where the rug comes in. Placing a rug over the floor will stop the UV rays from hitting and fading the floor.
Similarly, you can put other indoor decor in the way to create a physical barrier between the UV rays and the floor or furniture. Plants, privacy screens, and the like can help decrease the amount of UV wear and tear. Additionally, you may want to regularly rearrange furniture in the affected room to more evenly distribute the amount of UV any one piece of furniture or spot of floor is getting hit by.
As we said, the number one thing you can do to protect your home’s interior is to treat the windows with coverings or films, and here at Budget Blinds of Scottsdale and Fountain Hills, we are thrilled to help you with both! Our expert designers and installers can walk you through the process of finding the exact right solution to your problems in no time.