Although some homeowners obtain residential window tinting with the intention of making their home more eco-friendly, others do it for the other benefits window tinting provides, such as privacy. Even if you choose window tinting simply for the privacy, it can still make your home more eco-friendly. Here's how.

Reducing unwanted heat gain

Unwanted heat gain is a big problem for American homeowners in the summer, especially those who live in warmer climates. In fact, there are whole industries built around this. Many people make their livings as air conditioning maintenance and installation experts, helping homeowners remove unwanted heat from their homes in the summer. But did you know that well over a third of unwanted heat can enter through windows? Insulating your windows is an excellent step to prevent this, but even if you're not focusing on eco-friendliness, you can still reduce unwanted heat gain by using window tinting. Window tinting helps keep some of the light out (in some cases it mostly lets the visible light through, but blocks the non-visible light such as UV rays), and this means your sunny windows won't add so much of a burden to your AC system's load.

Reducing the urban heat island effect

When you reduce the amount of heat gain and the amount of work your AC unit has to do, you reduce your contribution to the urban heat island effect. This refers to how cities tend to warm up their area and the area directly around them, which can really mess up local ecosystems. Warmed-up rainwater runoff can then get into streams and other waterways and mess up those ecosystems as well. So the more you can offset your contribution to this issue, the more planet-friendly you are.

Reducing UV ray damage

UV rays can come through sunny windows and fade your furniture, clothing, upholstery, carpets, and other belongings. This, of course, isn't directly bad for the environment, but the more new products you have to buy to replace the old, faded ones, the more demand you're creating for new products to be made (unless you're buying gently used items instead of brand new ones, which is a great choice for the Earth but can come with its own set of challenges). If your window tinting blocks UV rays, you can avoid this unpleasant fading and other more serious types of damage that UV rays can cause over time (such as making surfaces more brittle and less elastic).