In the age of technology when the most complicated questions can be answered with the click of a mouse and the sum of all human knowledge and the entirety of history is freely available to anyone with an internet connection, we’re constantly amazed by the way the web is manipulated to bamboozle, flummox and trick people into believing things that blatantly aren’t true.
For some reason, the tinting business is particularly prone to these rumors, so we thought that we would take the opportunity to finally clear up some of the more outlandish claims and take the time to answer some of the more genuine, heartfelt worries and concerns that people have about window tinting and why they should, or shouldn’t if that’s their choice, take their car to the nearest specialist to get its windows tinted.
What Is A Window Tint? Is It Dangerous?
A window tint or film is absolutely not dangerous and poses no threat to human or animal health and safety as long as you don’t feed it after midnight or let it get wet. Seriously, though a film (unlike a Gremlin) is absolutely safe, and is a polyester film that’s coated with scratch-proof material and has been designed to keep you and your automobile safe from the most harmful of the sun’s rays.
They’re made to filter out UV (Ultra Violet) and IR (Infra Red) rays which are both directly linked to skin cancer, can effectively reduce the amount of heat that your car absorbs from the sun, protect the interior of your car from the more harmful effects of the aforementioned sun and also offer an unheralded degree of privacy and security by keeping the unwanted attention of peepers and snoopers at bay.
And on top of all that, they also look incredibly cool too.
Does A Window Tint Go On The Inside Or The Outside Of A Car?
This question has always sort of knocked us for six, as we thought the answer was obvious, but then as we’ve been part of the industry for most of our adult lives, maybe what we think is obvious isn’t to anyone else.
So, we’d like to offer our profound apologies to anyone who ever asked us this question, and was given short shrift in return. We’ll try to make up for it with this answer.
Tints are always, without exception, fitted on the inside of the window of a car, but we’re aware of why some people think that they’re fitted on the outside. It’s because the tint is initially placed on the outside of each window of a car in order for it to be sized and shaped. Each of the templates is then trimmed and perfected on a large glass working area, and prepared for installation.
The windows of the car that each tint is going to be fitted to are then cleaned and prepared before the tints are finally fixed in place using adhesive, which is also one hundred percent safe and nontoxic to either humans or animals, on the inside windows of the car.
Tints Take Forever To Fit And They’re Incredibly Fragile
It’s a good job that it isn’t true that it takes a long time to fit a window tint, otherwise, we’d never have left the garage floor and we’d still be fitting them now instead of being sat here talking to you about them, and we know what we’d rather be doing. And just in case you were in any doubt, we much prefer talking to you guys.
Contrary to popular belief, it usually takes between two and two and two and half hours to completely tint a car, but it can take anywhere up to three days for those tints to completely cure. That’s the only reason that most installers recommend that you don’t open your car’s windows for a couple of days and don’t wash your car a similar amount of time after you’ve had the tints fitted.
It’s to ensure that they cure properly and the adhesive bond is permanent.
As for tints being fragile, well again we’re not sure where that particular rumor sprang up from, but we mentioned earlier just about every tint is now scratch-resistant and as such is almost fully child and pet-proof, and won’t suffer any untoward damage during those long cross country trips to visit the inlaws.
At most, all you’ll have to worry about is wiping them down and cleaning them every now and then but as you already do that when you valet and clean your car, you’ll already be in a comfort zone that you know and are more than familiar with.
That’s All Folks…
And that’s about it. We hope that we’ve put some long-standing myths to rest and now that you know a little more about tinting, that you’ll at least think about having it done and letting you, your family, and your car embrace everything that it has to offer,