As face is to body, so are windows to the house. The beautiful and perfect windows not only improve the indoor environment, but also give an aesthetic look to your house. In other words, they enhance the façade.

So you are now constructing a house or buying a new one. And you are nursing a desire of having perfect windows — a blend of the traditional Indian window design and the modern age window material. Rightly so. Because that would mean you are getting windows with an added advantage of withstanding the onslaught of sun and rains, with a promise that the windows would not fade or become prone to termites. You certainly are making a good choice going for such windows, like the villa windows.

“Villa window, made of unplasticised polyvinyl chloride (UPVC), expands the design possibilities available to home owners and architects. For the first time, sizes that span entire balconies and rise from floor to ceiling can be made in casements (windows with sash that opens outside). This helps in creating brighter homes with adequate sunlight,” said Sanjay Gupta, zonal head of North Fanesta, India’s largest windows and doors company. Fanesta produces villa windows.

Undoubtedly, the experience of your old house windows — designed of a grill and mesh on a wooden frame — might be still haunting you owing to the fact that windows fitted in the house were inadequate due to poor insulation, low strength and inability to withstand weather vagaries. Only because of these, the termites have eaten up window sills and thus the shape of the windows of your old house. Naturally, you feel extreme discomfort every time you think about it. So you certainly want to mark a dramatic change from the past.

In fact, in India, protection against mosquitoes is a universal window requirement. So what you would be looking for is a bug mesh in the inner sash of the window system that could block the entry of mosquitoes and insects when you open the window for ventilation.

“Wood attracts termites and UPVC doesn't. As you know, a termite-eaten wooden window has to be replaced — at considerable expense. Wood requires regular polishing and painting and tends to warp. While in villa windows, you have no such problem,” said Gupta.

Very often, we come across news reports about the burglars broking the window panes into the house of our neighbour and fleeing with valuables worth crores and we are filled with overwhelming fear that the next turn would be ours. So the security grill is an absolute necessity in homes across India. You see, in traditional windows, the grill is screwed to the masonry whereas if that grill is integrated with clamps it would make homes much safer. “Villa window is the first UPVC casement window in the world to accommodate a grill in the same frame as a mesh,” said Gupta.

“The steel reinforced frame of the villa window allows you to create large sizes. Traditional wooden windows are not strong and need the support of bars that crisscross, forming little squares that obstruct sunlight and the view.” zz

shabirdar@mydigitalfc.com