Stained Glass Window Panels for Decorating Your Room

If you want to dramatically alter the look of a room, or the impression of a house, consider stained glass window panels.

Stained glass panels come in 3 basic types- lead channel, foil, and faux. Faux window panels are usually painted glass with fake foiling, giving the impression of stained glass without the expense. These are designed to be hung inside an existing window, where they are protected from the elements.

Lead channel window panels are the original form of stained glass. Working and soldering the channel is labor intensive and the designs tend to be simpler executions because of the weight and labor involved. 

Foiled panels are able to use much smaller pieces and can even use 3D techniques, with flowers or birds lifting from the purely vertical, into the room they occupy. The glass pieces are cut, ground smooth, the edges encased in copper foil, the pieces are fitted together, and after a flux solution is applied so it will adhere, solder is melted over the foils and joins the pieces of glass together.

Because the pieces of glass used are smaller, more intricate detailing can be made. This also makes the stained glass window panel stronger. In fact, many cities will allow the use of foiled panels in doors and sidelights without the need for safety glass.

As stained glass panels have gained in popularity, so has the ease with which you can acquire them, with several dozen designs being mass produced and available through home improvement outlets or interior design stores. There are hundreds of designs available to be made by artisans working in the stained glass field. And, depending on your budget; they can make a window panel of practically anything you wish. If it can be drawn, they can build it.

Color, texture and opacity are also aspects of your design to consider. Glass can have colors as clear as Jello, or swirls, or only register a change in brightness, but not what's beyond the glass. It can be poured into molds so one side looks like pebbles or bubbles. It can have a metallic or crystalline sheen.

Shape can also be part of your window panel design- rectangular, arched, polyhedral, trapezoid, parallelogram; whatever the shape of your window, the window panel can be designed to fill it. [You could even have one shaped like a Christmas tree, but your builder would probably have a fit.]