Color Considerations for Commercial Window Fabricators

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If you’re in the fenestration industry, and you stay up to date on home décor and design trends, you’re likely aware that colored vinyl windows have made an impact on homes everywhere. Homeowners are looking for darker hues that match modern living spaces — and window frames can make a statement.

But this is a commercial blog. Why are we talking about residential vinyl? There are a few reasons that I’ve been thinking about recently.

The first is because apartment or condominium dwellers have desires too, and builders have taken notice. My colleagues and I have been hearing increasing chatter in recent months about the demand for new color options in multifamily housing and high-rise applications. The second is because commercial-grade vinyl is an ideal choice for applications like the ones I just described for several reasons (as regular readers of this blog know), and it’s an ideal material to pair with an increasingly wide range of available color options.

For commercial window manufacturers, there are a few things to think through as you’re thinking of developing new color options or expanding your current portfolio. Let’s take a look:

Color Quality
Branching into new colors involves evaluating the different technology options that are available to commercial fabricators. Generally, paint and laminate options are the ones most frequently considered when it comes to offering colored windows. However, both methods have their drawbacks. Each needs additional labor on the plant floor (i.e., applying the paint or laminate), and at a time when fabricators are struggling with manpower, such steps can be limiting. Meanwhile, paint and laminate quality is of utmost importance. Lesser materials may be susceptible to longevity issues over time, especially in commercial applications and in most extreme climates.

But advanced color technology available today can solve each of these challenges. Co-extruded color technology, for example, sees that color becomes an integral part of the vinyl profile itself. Such technology delivers significantly enhanced scratch resistance, high durability and the ability to withstand harsh weather conditions seen by commercial windows. It’s an option worth exploring for each of these benefits.

Thermal Efficiency

I’ve written extensively about the performance benefits of select commercial vinyl window systems. In a regulatory environment that’s increasingly concerned with sustainability and stringent demands for commercial buildings, high-performing vinyl window systems can deliver outstanding energy benefits in applications where metallic systems have traditionally held the majority of the market share. The energy benefits can be striking, and these systems have increasingly proved their ability to deliver long-term performance.

Your ability to pair a high-performance commercial window system with high-quality color technology as described earlier can be a powerful differentiator in these types of markets. Think dense metropolitan areas especially, where aesthetic design considerations collide with stringent building code requirements.

Ordering and Availability

One challenge for manufacturers offering multiple color options is the added SKUs doing so involves. For example: Let’s say you offer one commercial profile in four standard color options, but several new project opportunities are requesting additional color options and some dual color configurations. If your supplier can offer these options, it could open new business opportunities, but also lead to added inventory challenges.

From an inventory perspective, things can quickly become complicated. You don’t want to have countless varieties of colored units sitting around in your warehouse, either. And your vinyl supplier won’t be hanging on to all that inventory themselves. A good one, however, can help deliver on your needs in step with your demand with a reasonable lead time. Open these kinds of conversations with your vinyl supplier to ensure you can both stay nimble.

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As the commercial construction industry continues to demand more from its fenestration systems, I think that increasingly broad color options represent one way we can continue to innovate. Pairing those options with high levels of performance and efficiency is even better.

Giving Architects What They Want

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I spend a lot of time thinking about how the commercial glass and glazing community can collaborate on an ongoing basis with the broader architectural community. Architects are a critical part of how we create modern commercial spaces, and they’re continuously looking for new, sustainable and efficient ways to realize forward-thinking and innovative designs.

It’s our job to meet those needs. Window and glass systems are an important part of overall building design. It’s up to our industry to build relationships and to provide those quality, high-performing solutions that architects and designers demand. This is especially true as new building codes and standards mandate higher levels of performance, and as a drive toward greater sustainability becomes more important.

So, how can we help? There are a couple of ways.

Make High-Performance Products Easy to Specify

Architects need information to do their jobs properly, and it’s the responsibility of the commercial glass and glazing professionals to get them that information as easily as possible. When drafting a specification, they might need anything from thermal performance specifications, color options, LEED performance documentation, data sheets or even detailed specification guidelines. Any or all of this information could be required before a specific product becomes a specification.

It is increasingly important that this information be accessed quickly and seamlessly, particularly as specifications grow more complex due to the pressure from newer building codes. Anyone drawing up a specification for a new building in New York City, for example, needs the right information to be sure the product selected is up to code. To do their jobs well, architects are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and we need to provide them with the technical information required to help make high-performance fenestration products essential parts of new designs.

Continue Delivering New Insights

Over the last decade, the commercial design community has embraced flexible warm-edge spacer technology for high-rise applications for several reasons. The technology’s workability has brought new efficiencies to projects throughout North America, along with outstanding thermal performance. The benefits are clear, and the real-world proof is out there.

This has happened in part through relationship-building and effective communication of the benefits that true warm-edge spacers can provide. The technology has also proven itself in demanding commercial applications, heightening its appeal among commercial builders and designers. As word about the benefits continues to circulate, the momentum only stands to increase in the coming years. Meanwhile, North American commercial vinyl and window profiles are in the position that warm-edge technology was in not too long ago. Performance has caught up to demanding applications, and we need to communicate those benefits as often as we can. We have an opportunity to provide invaluable assistance, helping architects to understand the thermal and structural capabilities of today’s commercial vinyl to meet a project’s requirements.

It is our job to continue these conversations with the architectural community and to demonstrate how we can help achieve aesthetically beautiful, high-performance and cost-effective designs. Continued proactive engagement is the way forward.

Building Better Relationships with Personal Touch

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I’ve written before that collaboration between all stakeholders in the fenestration industry is a key part of how we’ll meet our collective goal and overcome our shared challenges in the coming years and decades. Because no matter what we’re facing, we’re still an industry that revolves around people. Whether its manufacturers, installers, architects or building owners, our ability to form meaningful connections is critical.

I’ve been thinking about this lately in some of my recent interfacing with the architectural community. Architects know that high-performing glass and glazing technology is essential to meeting new building codes in some of North America’s biggest markets — and they need solutions when incorporating it into their designs. Part of my job is helping identify those solutions and providing them not just with product options, but the technical and performance data they need to work those options into their specifications.

I find these to be rewarding conversations. They’re collaborative, and perhaps more important, they’re personal, with each party working to understand and educate each other. Ideally, the result will not just be a successful project, but an ongoing and mutually beneficial relationship.

I think this is a mindset that professionals throughout our industry should approach every interaction with. Because it’s important to remember that no matter what kind of business you run today, your customers have options. And providing them with an experience they’ll remember — one that shows you care about their success as much as your own — can set you apart from your competition. Here are a few ways you can accomplish it:

Intangibles matter. A great product or service might not be the only reason your customers choose to do business with your organization. Other reasons could include:

  • The decade-long relationship a salesperson has formed with a key customer.
  • That same salesperson’s ability to proactively anticipate customer needs.
  • The additional service and support provided to tackle any challenge that may arise.
  • The friendly service customers are always treated to, no matter whom they’re interacting with.

All of these things are indicative of something deeper: that you truly care about your customer and their success. With that, you can better understand how best to serve them, help meet their challenges and work to offer new solutions they want and need.

Internal customers matter, too. Ensuring your customers (or any stakeholders you regularly interface with) are receiving the best experience possible means taking care of the people that are responsible for providing that experience: your employees.

That could mean investing in training for your plant floor employees, helping them do their jobs better to deliver a more reliable product. It could mean empowering teams to do whatever it takes to provide exceptional customer care. It requires an environment of respect, alignment, and collaboration, and it should start at the very top of your organization.

In an industry where new challenges seem to crop up with increasing frequency, meeting customer expectations is becoming more demanding. Finding a way to deliver a personalized experience and foster an ongoing relationship can help.

Joe Erb is national account manager for Quanex.