Picture this: You’ve just picked up a new car or truck from the dealer. They’ve washed it, given it a spritz with that lovely new car scent, put a big red bow on the hood or placed a basket of goodies in the trunk or cargo area. You’ve signed the papers, and you’re off for your first drive. For many of us, we’d drop by a family member’s or friend’s house to let them check out our new whip. For others, the first step is to start personalizing the vehicle. We’ve heard hundreds, if not thousands, of stories where new-vehicle owners head straight for their favorite automotive window tint shop for an upgrade. Unless you’re a veteran of vehicle upgrades, choosing the best window tint for your vehicle takes some knowledge and planning. What shade do you want? What safety and comfort options matter to you? Let’s look at automotive window tint shade and color considerations.

Why Should I Tint My Vehicle’s Windows?

There are four main reasons consumers might want the windows of their car or truck tinted. First, it can make the vehicle look better. A nice dark tint on a white or black vehicle can be very dramatic. The second reason people purchase window tint is comfort. The latest window tint films can block as much as 67% of the infrared heat energy from the sun. The third reason is security. Even a moderate tint film can help conceal objects left on the seat or floor of your vehicle. Finally and perhaps most importantly, all premium window films block between 97 and 99 of the harmful UV rays from the sun. This UV energy can damage your skin and accelerate the fading of leather, vinyl, carpets and upholstery in your vehicle. Your local mobile enhancement retailer can help you choose a film series to deliver the comfort and protection you want.

Understanding Window Tint Shades

Let’s start with a benchmark. The graph below is a spectrographic analysis of the energy coming from the sun. There was nothing in front of the sensor on the spectrometer.

The horizontal axis on the graph represents the wavelength of light in nanometers. Wavelength is the inverse of frequency. We are approaching the ultraviolet range on the left side of the chart, where the color is purple or violet. On the far right, we have dark red and are approaching the infrared range. The vertical scale is intensity, measured in microwatts per square centimeter. A higher value on the Y-axis represents more light at that specific wavelength. The small red line in the graph highlights the wavelength that was the most intense (brightest) for that measurement. The brightest in this measurement was 480 nanometers, which is a blue-green color.

Before we start measuring the tint films, we need to measure a piece of glass. I called a few local glass shops, and Clegg Glass in Burlington, Ontario, was able to provide me with a 12-by-12-inch piece of 1/8-inch-thick glass in less time than it took me to drive to their facility. Have to love prompt service!

While easy to see through, you likely know that glass isn’t transparent – it’s close, though. Most glass has a light green shade that’s visible when you look at the edge. Clear glass like you’d find in a house window blocks a small amount of light – usually delivering a visible light transmission (VLT) of around 89%. If you thought we wouldn’t start this article by testing these, you haven’t read enough BestCarAudio.com articles!

The chart above shows how much light energy passes through the glass compared with a direct reading from the sun. The difference isn’t significant.

This third graph shows how much energy and at what wavelength the glass blocks. The glass transmits all wavelengths reasonably uniformly. We can see that it stops some blue energy at 450 nanometers more than other wavelengths. There’s a spike at 380 nanometers where it blocks more energy that’s approaching the ultraviolet range.

Testing Automotive Tint Film Light Transmission

We reached out to Mike at Mobile Edge in Lehighton, Pennsylvania, to get some samples of the 3M automotive window films. They kindly sent 2-by-2-inch squares of the 11 different films they had in stock at the time. We’ll start our explanation of the film shades by measuring the light transmission performance of the Ceramic IR series, as they sent samples of 70, 35, 25, 15 and 5%.

The graph shows how much light energy the spectrometer captured after passing through the different pieces of tint affixed to our glass piece. The Ceramic IR 70 with a 70% VLT is the top blue trace. Not surprisingly, the Ceramic IR 35 (yellow) lets in about half as much light energy as the CIR70. Of course, the CIR 5 is the darkest of the tints and lets in very little light energy.

A few interesting things to note from these measurements: All of the films do an excellent job of blocking low-wavelength energy in the violet range. This is because they are designed to offer excellent ultraviolet protection. 3M says they block over 99% of the UV energy from the sun. The second thing to notice is that the films have a downward taper to their transmission at higher wavelengths. Ceramic IR tint film offers good thermal energy rejection, so it makes sense that less infrared energy will pass.

Window Tint Shades

The next test is three different films with a 35% VLT rating. I had samples of Ceramic IR, Premium Series FX-HP and the Color Stable tint. Here’s how these films performed on our glass sample.

You’re likely to notice that FX-HP and Color Stable let through more energy in the higher wavelengths. These films are not marketed as being designed to block significant amounts of heat. Next, you’ll notice that FX-HP has a big dip around 690 nanometers (red) compared to the Color Stable film. The different balance of light energy transmission will not only make objects seen through the film look different but will give the film itself a different hue. Because the Ceramic IR films let more blue and green energy through, they have a slightly blue-green hue. Color Stable film has relatively neutral transmission characteristics, so it looks neutral and just grayish. Finally, FX Premium blocks more of the yellow and red wavelengths, so it has a very slight brown hue. As you can see by the dip on the left side of the graphs, all of the films do a great job of blocking UV energy.

Picking the Best Tint for Your Car or Truck

The product specialist at the mobile enhancement retailer installing the tint on your vehicle can help you navigate the options available to you. If you want heat rejection, Ceramic IR is the best choice. If you’re after a film that matches the tint on the factory privacy glass rear side windows, then Color Stable remains a popular option. If price is a concern, but you still want a quality film, then FX-HP is an excellent choice.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.

If you’re considering having the windows of your car, truck, SUV or van tinted, there’s definitely a variety of films available. We aren’t talking about different brands like 3M, Llumar, Suntek and Tint World. We’re also not referring to the different shades or light transmission properties of film. There are four types of film available for your car or truck: dyed, metallic, carbon and ceramic. Each offers different benefits and, depending on your reasons for having your windows tinted, may or may not be the perfect solution.

How Dyed Window Tint Is Made

Dyed tint film starts with the delivery of bulb polyester beads to the manufacturing company. The beads are fed into an extrusion machine to mix and compress them until they melt together to form a thick liquid. An extruder is like a giant, heavy-duty meat grinder. Some companies will run the melted polyester through multiple stages of filtering and repeated extruding to ensure that the finished product is as pure as possible.

Once they’re happy with the mixing and heating process, they place the clear liquid on a smooth, temperature-controlled drum to begin taking the shape of the film. After the film comes off the drum, it’s stretched lengthwise and across its width to align the molecules and give the material strength. How much the sheet is stretched also determines the final thickness – an important consideration for a tinter who has to apply film to a curved glass surface.

A dye is then added to the polyester film to block light transmission. More dye results in a darker film. You can think of the dying process like making a tie-dyed T-shirt, though it takes special chemicals and proper heating to execute the process reliably. Films in a series are sold by their visible light transmission, or VLT, ratings. A very dark 5% tint film will allow about 5% of visible light through to the interior of the vehicle. A light film, say 50%, blocks only 50% of the light.

Once the dying process is complete, three more layers still need to be added. First, a scratch-resistant coating is added. This coating prevents swirls and scuffs when you or your detailer clean the windows. The next layer is an adhesive. The type of adhesive that each brand and series of film uses plays a huge role in the reliability of the film. If you’ve seen a rear window that’s full of bubbles – it’s most likely because an adhesive has failed. Finally, the last layer is a release layer. The release layer protects the adhesive and allows the technician to cut and shape the film until they’re ready to apply it to the window. This release layer is like the silicone coating paper that a sticker is attached to before you put it on your car bumper or your toolbox.

The benefit of dyed tint films is that they are the most affordable. The biggest drawback, though, is their limited longevity. The dyes are prone to fading or turning purple after months or a few years of exposure to the UV rays from the sun. There are, of course, many quality levels of dyed films. If the price you’ll be paying to have your windows tinted seems too good to be true, it’s not likely a deal – it’s inexpensive film.

If you need a tint for a vehicle that you’ll only own for a year or two, dyed film might be a solution. With that said, many shops that offer premium window tinting services no longer offer dyed films, since they turn out to be more of a headache than they’re worth.

Metallic Window Tint Film

The next step up in film technology is metallic films. This type of film starts with the same extruded polyester sheets but has a microscopic layer of metal (often aluminum) added either by sputtering, electron beam coating or vapor deposition coating. Vapor deposition coating involves super-heating the metal particles into a fog that the film passes through. While effective, the consistency across and along the film isn’t always perfect. The sputtering process is more consistent and involves passing the film through a vacuum chamber, where a high-voltage electric charge is used to vaporize and transfer the metal to the film. This method of coating is common in telescope and photography lenses as it’s very uniform.

Once the metal has been applied to the base polyester film, it’s finished in the same way as a dyed film with the addition of a protective layer, an adhesive layer and a release layer.

There are a couple of benefits to metallic films. They don’t have the same problems with fading as a dyed film, and they can block a small amount of infrared heat from the sun to help keep your vehicle cooler. Unfortunately, there’s an issue with metallic film in that it can block radio signals. If your car radio antenna is integrated into your vehicle’s rear window, metallic film can affect its performance. If you have a smartphone or a portable navigation system, the film may reduce reception. In some vehicles, it also affects keyless entry and tire pressure monitoring systems.

Carbon Window Tint Film

In recent years, one of the more popular films uses carbon to block light and heat energy. Different companies may use various mixtures of carbon to help produce a rich, dark look rather than the brownish hue that the early solutions offered. The nanoscale carbon particles are often mixed into the adhesive layer rather than being bonded with the polyester.

In terms of benefits, carbon offers a boost in thermal energy rejection over metallic films, and the newer formulations are very stable in terms of not fading or changing colors. Their drawback is a tendency to be a bit hazy when you look through them at a low angle, rather than being perpendicular to the glass. This haziness comes from the size of the carbon particles. Of course, it’s the size of those particles that offers the heat rejection.

A subset of metallic and carbon films combines one of those technologies with a dyed polyester sub-layer to fine-tune the color of the film and its darkness. The cost of metallic or carbon films is higher than those that are dyed, so combining them can yield financial benefits.

Ceramic Window Films

At this point in time, ceramic films are the best available. Though it varies from brand to brand, the basic concept is similar to a metallic film in that the light- and heat-blocking particles are suspended in a layer of adhesive. In most films, this adhesive is between two layers of polyester. Some manufacturers claim to have over 200 layers in their films. Though it appears to be a closely guarded secret, several brands claim to use titanium nitride in their ceramic films to block light and reduce IR transmission.

The biggest benefit of ceramic film is its ability to block infrared energy. Most ceramic films block three to six times as much heat energy as the darkest dyed films. Ceramic films don’t suffer from fading issues, and they don’t affect radio reception. They are also quite clear. Their only drawback is their cost and, depending on the brand, their color. You can expect to pay significantly more for a high-quality ceramic window tint film compared with all the other options. In our opinion, the performance benefits and longevity are worth every penny. As for color, ceramic films can have a slightly greenish-blue hue. This varies by brand. Don’t fret, the color is subtle, and it won’t make your car look like Kermit the Frog is behind the wheel.

If you’re shopping for window tint for your car or truck, be sure to choose a shop that can demonstrate the performance differences of the films they offer. Most importantly, they should have a clean workspace with the proper tools and training to perfectly execute film installations.

This article is written and produced by the team at www.BestCarAudio.com. Reproduction or use of any kind is prohibited without the express written permission of 1sixty8 media.