What are the benefits of glass in interior design?

Glass is a strange material that offers near endless potential in transforming a space both practically and aesthetically, and recent advances in technology have widened these possibilities even further. While glazing may often be thought of as a purely practical facet of architecture and construction, it plays a significant part in interior design, too.

Understanding the benefits glass offers designers requires at least a basic appreciation for the nature of glazing in structural design. The best designers work with architectural glass installations, and know how to strike a harmony between their concepts and the glazing at their disposal. With that in mind, here are some of the benefits of glass in interior design:

Glass features can invite the outside in

While interior design is centred on the interior environment of a space or structure (who would have thought it?), this doesn’t mean that designers should feel restricted to aesthetics that only draw from the manmade, the modern, or the architectural. One of the great benefits of glass in interior design is that it offers a chance to invite the outside world in.

This is an invaluable feature for designers who wish to enhance the spatial aspects of their interiors. For many years, design has been fascinated by the concept of reduction. Whether tied to a specific movement such as minimalism, or simply following the principle of removing unnecessary clutter and refining other visual elements, these concepts have become a recurrent theme. 

In this regard, glazing can help arm interior designers with additional visual real estate. By working with a space that features an aesthetic bond between indoor and outdoor spaces, designers don’t need to focus as much on creating the illusion of room.

Another significant benefit of glass’s ability to link to the outdoors is the opportunity it affords designers to draw from nature in their work. While not a prerequisite to the inclusion of natural materials and styles, such as wood and stone, a large glazed installation can become a unifying visual anchor.

The key concept here is that glass doesn’t just have the potential to bring the outdoors inside; it has the potential to help designers shift their focus from the interior to the exterior. With so many different glazing features available, and technology allowing for more innovative and practical solutions than ever before, we thought we’d list a few of the most popular glazing features that bring something unique to interior design:

Glass walls

While glass walls were once cumbersome and obstructive due to the need for thick supporting frames, modern glazing techniques mean that specialists and architects can now create completely frameless panels, of almost any size. This can have a profound effect on an interior space.

Glass walls primarily create a sense of horizontal continuity. While a simple window might offer a ‘framed’ view of a particular exterior feature, frameless and expansive glazed walls create the illusion that an interior space extends beyond its actual confines.

Creating a backdrop in this way also adds a practical element, as glass walls can feature sliding doors that allow for seamless access to outside areas such as patios, al fresco dining areas, and gardens – meaning interior design elements (such as tables, chairs, and other features) can be ‘carried over’ into outside spaces, and vice versa.

Glass floors

With the introduction of heat-strengthened, toughened, and laminated glass, it’s now possible for glazing specialists and architects to include structural glass floors in a design. With everything from single panel installations to extensive glass flooring a possibility, these internal fittings offer a series of unique benefits when it comes to interior design.

If installed in the floor space between two storeys, glass floors can offer a view into a room above or below. In these scenarios, designers can treat ‘stacked’ spaces as one, with the view down or up through the glass floor becoming a visual extension of the space in question. This allows designs to flow vertically from one room to another, in a way that traditionally wouldn’t be possible without an open-plan structure.

Skylights/glass roofs

Glass roofs can offer both a practical and aesthetic element to a design. With both fixed and opening options available, these glazed installations can provide access to external rooftop areas (such as terraces or gardens) while also offering the aesthetic benefits of a frameless glazed feature. This means interior designers are able to draw from exterior areas that lie above an interior space, provided a line of sight exists.