Sheer Amazement: The Marvellous World Of Glass

How to Ensure Your Shopfront Is Safe and Secure

Owning your own shop is an amazing thing. You get to be your own boss, you can share products that you love and are passionate about, and you can play a vital role in driving the economy of your local high street and town. As you will know, there is huge amounts of capital and energy that goes into creating a successful retail business, and you will want to make sure that you do everything you can to protect your store. For this reason, it's important to pay particular attention to the safety and security of your shopfront. Here's how to go about it.

Choosing the right glass

First of all, it's imperative that you lean on the talents of a glazier that has particular experience with installing the huge glass panels that storefronts have, because these are a totally different kettle of fish to small home windows.

The type of glass you install is incredibly important for your security. Toughened glass is far and away the best choice. This kind of glass goes through an intense process of heating and cooling that makes it tougher, and thus more impervious to breakage, than regular glass panels. It's very important that you get the size of glass right the first time, because toughened glass cannot be recut – you'd have to create another pane of glass if you make a mistake, which would be costly.

Laminated glass is another option because the layered glass is harder to penetrate, but it's not as effective as toughened glass.

Add extra protection with shutters and grilles

The most important aspect of your storefront security is definitely protecting your products behind strong glass, but additional shutters and grilles, which can be used both internally and externally, are also a good idea. As well as having another physical layer between a burglar and your shop, a burglar may be more hesitant to try and access a store that has shutters down.

There are a number of different ways that shutters can be locked, but there is a possibility for key switches to be hot wired, and for this reason, it can be sensible to opt for a coded transmitter device.

There is also the option of collapsible grilles, which are installed within the window itself. This means the burglar would have to risk detection by first breaking the glass and then tackling a grille.

For more information and ideas, contact a local glass or window company like Stevens Glass Pty Ltd. They can help you find the best glass to protect your storefront and may even have advice on using shutters or grilles. Good luck with keeping your store safe and secure.