Glass Doors Design

A few decades ago, the most popular types of doors were the large, heavy, sturdy medieval-looking wooden doors with great, intricately carved designs all over the beautifully stained wood.

While those doors may still be beautiful, they also create a darker, more foreboding atmosphere for your home, because they do not allow light through and were usually stained in dark colors to create the image of being very old.

However, the modern trend has been toward the lighter and more elegant glass doors because they allow plenty of light to pass from window through door, from room to room.

Glass doors create a lighter, more welcoming atmosphere, and it’s been proven that a well-lit home can improve your mood and allow you to be more productive in general.Thus, glass doors can be a great option for your home and office, if you would like a warmer atmosphere.

There are a variety of designs that can be created on glass doors, just like with wood and its carvings. Glass door design can be very complex or very simplistic yet beautiful—there are many different ways to create wonderful designs on glass.

First is the glass frosting process. Frosting glass via sandblasting will create a translucent, rougher-looking glass door design that can show any number of intricate designs.

If you want more depth in your glass door design, then sandblasting is great because using this method of frosting in several steps, different transparencies can be created in the glass.

Lighter and heavier translucencies are akin to the shading of a piece of artwork, and create a wonderful three dimensional effect.

Another method of glass frosting is through the Leptat acid process, which was first developed by the Czechoslovakians in the World Fair that was in Osaka, Japan.

The Leptat acid process frosts and etches glass much more deeply than does sandblasting; while sandblasting will create a rough sheen over the glass and may look a little plastic-like, the Leptat acid process frosts glass by creating deep crystalline etchings that make the glass look like a cut gem, and causes thousands of glittering lights to reflect off the multifaceted surface.

Leptat etching is truly a beautiful design for your prospective glass door, but the drawback to it is that you cannot shade your pictures using light and dark, unlike in sandblasting.

The final method of glass door design is, of course, stained and colored glass. Stained and colored glass is created using metallic oxides to make colors in the glass; these days, subtly tinted glass can commonly be seen in doors and windows, and creates a beautiful effect on the sunshine.

Stained glass is also more subtle now, with a bit of staining and most of the glass left transparent so that the effect is not so garishly bright. Stained glass can be designed using liquid or semi-solid lead for the outlines, and then soldering pieces of tinted glass together for the stained glass pieces. To create it in your own home, you can use glass paints.