Vinyl on the ‘inside’ of a window

[Warren Beard]

Hi Frank

You can use any vinyl and that 651 will be fine, you will not see the adhesive through the glass.

Why don’t you cut a small image and stick it on to one of your windows and see how it looks.

Practice makes perfect.

Try do it dry as wet is not easy to do on glass as it takes a while to dry

and yes, you simply reverse the image.

hope that helps

cheers

Warren

[Frank_Galloway]

thanks Warren !
I think I will be stickering up my conservatory as a test 😀

thanks for confirming it will look fine from the reverse and that i was correct in my assumption of just reversing the image before cutting.

thought it would be ok – but just needed confirmation from those in the know 😎

thanks again
Frank.

[Martin Pearson]

Frank, as Warren says any normal vinyl will be OK.

Couple of other things to remember with windows is that anything on the inside will not be as effective as it would be on the outside because you are viewing it through the glass, with vehicles dark colours dont work very well because of the way light works but you can get round this by applying a light colour outline or backing colour. A lot of vehicles have a tint on the windows so any vinyl applied inside may not be seen if the window has a dark tint.

[Frank_Galloway]

thanks for the tips there Martin 😀

the guy I’m doing some work for has just decided on external anyway now – because of the very reason you mention… the signs will be less noticeable because of the tint and the overall glass reflection..

something i knew about and pointed out to him – he hadn’t thought about that and so was very grateful for the advice and now it makes my life easier too 😀 – i don;t have to work in reverse ! :lol1:

[David Rogers]

Also be aware (as I know it’s caught a few people out) that some of the ‘speciality’ vinyls (eg. some types of polished gold) are not always the same both sides – this applies equally to several of the ‘luminous’ / ‘day-glo’ and other bright colours – that are WHITE on the reverse side.

Other than that – apply to the glass as normal. Wet or dry…although wet can take an absolute eternity to get a sufficient grip to remove the application tape…so do dry whenever you can – especially with water based adhesives, they can go ‘milky’ until they dry out.

[Nick Cliffe]

Back in the 70’s I used to make stained glass signs but using coloured acrylics not actual glass.

I also hit the problem Martin mentioned then came up with the idea of using mirror window film to back it on the inside. That way, when viewed from outside the light reflected back out through the colour like a mirror, whilst viewing from the inside you could see through the mirror film like proper stained glass.

The effect gets reversed at night if its dark outside and lights are on inside. It was very effective and only eventually stopped doing it due to the methyl ethyl ketone in the acrylic thinners being a health hazard when I floated it onto the perspex!

This effect could work great with modern materials.

Nick

[John Wilson]

I put some vinyl’s on the inside of my shop window but that was only because I didn’t notice that the plotter was still set to reverse cut from the job before and I couldn’t be bothered cutting it again :lol1:

Also make sure the window is perfectly clean or you’ll see the dirt that the vinyl would normally hide 😳