From end users to architects, general contractors, and designers, I’ve seen a major interest growth in LED Edge Lit Glass. Often hailed as a way to achieve a floating image or boast a company’s brand or logo, LED Edge Lit Glass really does offer a wealth of design and function options oft overlooked or not even considered at any stage of project development.
What is LED Edge Lit Glass?
To get the most of edge lit glass, you really need to understand how it’s created. Firstly, a design, logo, image, or pattern is etched or carved into a glass panel. What’s important here is how well something is etched.
If you don’t have a reputable glass fabricator, you’ll end up with artifacts, dead areas (no light transmission), scratches, and other anomalies. You’ve seen architectural glass that had errors that were easy to let slide, but when you illuminate that panel of glass, all the mistakes are amplified, and they are lit up. So you have a spec or a scratch simply floating in mid-air next to that beautiful logo you spent so much on for someone to design and in turn spent so much money on a lit glass panel.
After you settle down with a good company, like FGD-OSS for instance, the base is made for the glass to sit in. The LED’s are stored inside that base which is plugged into a power supply.
This is where cool gets a little cooler; you get a remote to program color changes or just change on the fly. Since we’re talking LED’s who’s to say that the lights can’t change color depending on the season, holiday, time of day, company sales progress, or a color that represents the content etched into the glass. With large panels of glass, you can illuminate from top and bottom to get complete coverage.
Utilizing LED Edge Lit Glass as a main feature, or an aesthetic within a design, it’s always a considered a nice touch. Since colors can be changed on the fly, it always fits any environment or time. It can even be utilized not only to display a message or a texture, but it generates light. Use it.
Here’s one more nice touch, edge lit laminated glass. But you say “You can’t light up the edges of laminated glass, there are no etched designs to illuminate”. I follow this with a question; what are you laminating? Color film? Sure, that won’t look to awesome, but how about some Etama or Coutour? Now we’re talking. You can laminate natural fibers and illuminate them to create some sleek, museum looking pieces of, dare I say art? You are an artist, right? Then go, create some art, and light that sucker up.
