Can Security Window Film Make Your Home More Secure?

You can invest in sol­id wood or met­al doors and add a dead­bolt to ensure that a bur­glar won’t be able to kick your door in and gain access, but if your win­dows are not well secured, you might as well leave your doors wide open invit­ing all the neigh­bour­hood thieves to come in and help them­selves to your stuff!

Win­dows or glass doors are a real weak­ness when it comes to secur­ing your home against a break-in, and for obvi­ous rea­sons – the glass is eas­i­ly bro­ken allow­ing access inside. You could replace your exist­ing win­dows with dou­ble-glazed panes to strength­en the glass from impact, but that’s quite a cost­ly under­tak­ing. A less expen­sive alter­na­tive is to apply secu­ri­ty win­dow film to your exist­ing win­dows.

What is a secu­ri­ty win­dow film?

Secu­ri­ty win­dow film is com­posed of one or more lay­ers of poly­ester film, lam­i­nat­ed togeth­er with spe­cial adhe­sives. The thick­ness of the film ranges from 4 mils (100 microns) to 14 mils (350 microns) or more. In gen­er­al, the thick­er the film is, the high­er the degree of break, tear and punc­ture strength.

For most secu­ri­ty appli­ca­tions, 8 mils to 14 mils thick­ness film is usu­al­ly used. The man­u­fac­tur­er says that most secu­ri­ty film can resist blows of up 400 pounds. The cost for 3M’s 28-ply Ultra Safe­ty and Secu­ri­ty Clear Win­dow Film is $7 to $9 per square foot. Since the appli­ca­tion of the film to the win­dow is a bit tricky, it should real­ly be done by a pro­fes­sion­al, which will like­ly increase your cost.

How effec­tive is secu­ri­ty win­dow film against a break-in?

But the lit­tle extra expense may be worth it. When the win­dow is strength­ened by the secu­ri­ty win­dow film, it can delay or even pre­vent a break-in. The shat­ter­ing of the glass will make a lot of noise which may scare the bur­glar away, or at the very least, delay him, which will give you time to call the police.

How­ev­er, it should be kept in mind that hav­ing your win­dows for­ti­fied with secu­ri­ty win­dow film will not make your house bur­glar-proof. This is an impor­tant secu­ri­ty mea­sure but should be com­bined with oth­er home secu­ri­ty strate­gies. For instance, to fur­ther pro­tect the win­dows from becom­ing an easy entry point for a bur­glar, you can con­nect your secu­ri­ty alarm to your win­dows.

The minute the glass is bro­ken, the alarm goes off, the police is on their way, and so most assured­ly will be the thief. Or, you can plant some very thorny bush­es and shrubs right under your win­dow. This tan­gled, impen­e­tra­ble and most like­ly quite painful access may just dis­suade the thief from going through with his intend­ed rob­bery.