The Prestige

No – not the film of the same title starring Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Scarlett Johansson and Andy Serkis [with an appearance by David Bowie as Nikola Tesla too!].

We’re talking about 3M’s amazing Prestige window film.

It’s a brilliant piece of technical engineering and innovation – all in an almost invisible sheet of film.

Traditional films use metals to provide solar control and reduce the heat of the sun passing through the glass

However, the metals create reflection and colour, making them impractical for buildings that need to retain their external appearance and the ability for people to still see in.

3M’s high quality Prestige range of window film deal with solar control in a completely different way.

3M Prestige has no metal. Instead, it incorporates hundreds of 3M’s unique nanotech sheets designed to filter out and reject the infrared heat energy of the sun. 

Prestigious job

We installed the 3M Prestige 70 film to the south facing façade of  this environmentally conscious client’s building to reduce the volume of the sun’s heat passing into building.

The aim was to not only protect against the direct heat generated by the sunlight – but also reduce the load for the cooling system. 

In this picture we had only installed the film halfway down – which illustrates just how clear 3M Prestige 70 film appears.

It’s a kind of magic…

The ‘Prestige’ is a term used by magicians for the third ‘act’ of an illusion. The Prestige is the payoff. First comes The Pledge: The magician shows you something relatively ordinary, like a dove. Second is The Turn: The magician takes the dove and makes it do something extraordinary, like disappear. Finally, there’s The Prestige: The magician tops that disappearance and makes the dove reappear.

Very similar to Mark most days – disappears mid-morning then re-appears on another day. Magic. Where did he go – how did he do it. No one knows…

Kev dabbled with amateur magic for a while but had to pack it in due to an unfortunate incident during a ‘sawing the lady in half’ trick.

It’s a kind of magic was also the title of the Queen song used on the soundtrack for another film – Highlander.

Durable

Good with glass