Luminara
Aluminum frames with an insulating break running through the middle, so the metal outside never touches the metal inside and the heat does not walk across. The frames stay slim and the glass is what you notice from across the room. Luminara also brings you tilt-turn windows, ordinary across Europe and still rare here.
One sash, one handle, two ways to open it. Where you stop the handle decides which one you get.
Turn the handle halfway and the top of the sash leans into the room a few inches while the bottom stays held. Air moves through, the gap is too small to climb through, and rain runs off the outside of the glass instead of onto your floor. Leave it that way overnight.
Turn the handle the rest of the way and the whole sash swings inward on its hinges. That is full airflow when you want a room aired out after a hot day. It also puts the outside face of the glass in front of you, so an upstairs window gets washed from the hallway with both feet on the carpet.
The stile is the upright piece of frame where two panes meet in the middle of a window, and on a wide opening it is the piece that eats your view. Aluminum is stiff, so it holds a big pane with much less frame around it. Vinyl has to be bulkier or it flexes, and on a wide opening it needs a steel bar run inside the frame as well, which is why vinyl frames end up wide down the middle. Same hole in the wall. You just get a different amount of sky.
Stiff, so the frame can stay thin
Across a run of windows on one wall you see it right away. It shows again at a corner, where two panes meet with almost nothing between them.
Bulky, because vinyl flexes
Vinyl is the right call for most valley retrofits and we fit a great deal of it. In the same opening it simply shows you less sky.
A room's windows and its door can be the same design, since the S85, E76 and E70 each come as both. On a plain tract-home retrofit this is more window than the house needs. It suits a house built around glass, where a heavy frame would throw the proportions off.
Windows
S85 inswing · Aluminum
S85 outswing and E76 · Aluminum
S93 · Aluminum
E70 · Aluminum
G91 and G101 · Aluminum
152/161 · Aluminum
Doors
G120 and G165 · Aluminum
G185 · Aluminum
S85 · Aluminum
E76 · Aluminum
E70 · Aluminum
Entry door · Aluminum
Finishes
Luminara's color card
Who covers what, and for how long.
Five steps, and the third one is here only because these frames are aluminum. Call us at any of them.
The G120 and G165 lift and slide doors run to nearly ten feet tall. Both hinged doors, the slim one and the wide-opening one, reach just under eight. Among the windows, the E76 goes to about six and a half feet and the S85 tilt-turn to almost six.
On every model with printed figures, a strip of nylon runs through the frame to slow heat crossing from the outside metal to the inside. Low-E can be chosen to meet a limit on heat passing through the glass, on the sun's heat coming in, or both. Laminated glass, which has a clear plastic layer bonded inside it, adds security and cuts the low and middle-pitched sound of traffic and voices.
Two panes or three, with or without Low-E, and tempered glass that meets the safety code on larger windows. For privacy there is frosted, tinted and screen-printed glass, plus smart glass that switches between clear and cloudy, though not every one of these suits every model. A warm-edge spacer can hold the panes apart, so no metal carries heat across the edge of the glass. With argon gas filling the gap, the pair makes for a longer-lasting seal and helps prevent condensation.
Every figure here comes off Luminara's current catalog, for you or your architect, with inches first and the catalog's millimeters beside them. The nylon strip column gives the width of the strip that slows heat crossing each frame.
| Window or door | Sizes the catalog prints | Nylon strip (thermal break) | Hardware |
|---|---|---|---|
| S85 tilt-turn window | About 18 to 39 in. wide (450 to 1000 mm) and 22 to 71 in. tall (550 to 1800 mm) | About 1 3/8 in. (35.3 mm) in the frame, 1 3/16 in. (30 mm) in the sash | Siegenia, hidden tilt and turn |
| S85 outswing window | Not printed | About 1 3/8 in. (35.3 mm) in the frame, 1 3/16 in. (30 mm) in the sash | CME (USA) hidden hinge, side-mounted handle |
| S93 window with built-in screen | Not printed | About 1 3/4 in. (44 mm) in the frame, 1 in. (25 mm) in the sash | Siegenia (Germany), hidden |
| E76 window | About 18 to 39 in. wide (450 to 1000 mm) and 22 to 79 in. tall (555 to 2000 mm). Opening sash up to about 26 sq. ft. (2.4 sq. m) | About 1 3/8 in. (35.3 mm) | Siegenia, hidden tilt and turn |
| G120 lift and slide door | About 28 to 79 in. wide (720 to 2000 mm) and 71 to 118 in. tall (1800 to 3000 mm) | About 1 3/16 in. (30 mm) | Siegenia / Sobinco |
| G165 lift and slide door with screen | About 28 to 79 in. wide (720 to 2000 mm) and 71 to 118 in. tall (1800 to 3000 mm) | About 1 3/16 in. (30 mm) | Not printed |
| S85 slim hinged door | About 30 to 43 in. wide (750 to 1100 mm) and 71 to 94 in. tall (1800 to 2400 mm) | About 1 1/4 in. (31 mm), with two hollow chambers | Sobinco (Belgium), Skyline series handle |
| E76 wide-opening hinged door | About 28 to 43 in. wide (700 to 1100 mm) and 59 to 94 in. tall (1500 to 2400 mm) | About 1 3/8 in. (35.3 mm), with several hollow chambers | Roto heavy-duty hinges |
The rest of the models on this page have no figures in the catalog, so they are left out of this table. Widths and heights are printed as ranges, without saying whether a width means one panel or the whole unit. How that applies depends on the style and layout you pick, so yours get confirmed with the factory before they go on a drawing.
Fourteen photographs from Luminara's own catalog, not our jobs. Open any one to see it full size.
Yes. A tilt-turn sash comes into the room, so the insect screen has to sit on the outside face of the frame where the sash never touches it. You work the handle from inside with the screen in place.
One is fine. People often start with the opening that bothers them most, usually a west-facing room that is unbearable by four in the afternoon, then come back for the rest a season later. A single patio door or a single entry door is a normal call for us.
Usually. Some associations restrict frame color and a few restrict the finish as well. We put both on the application to your HOA's architectural committee and file it for you. The part we cannot speed up is the committee, and in some valley communities it meets once a month if that.
Not always. Our problem here is heat and sun coming in, and most of that work is done by the coating on the glass, not by adding a third pane. Triple glazing earns its keep mainly on noise, so if you are near Ramon, Highway 111 or a flight path it is worth pricing out. Luminara's catalog does not say which models take two panes and which take three, so we check that with the factory for your windows.
Usually, yes. The consultant works out how much heat the whole house takes in, with the walls, roof and glass counted together. Checking one window at a time is not enough on a design carrying this much glass. We line that consultant up for you. Vinyl generally clears Title 24 on its own, which is less cost and less waiting for you.
Your install goes on record with the city and gets inspected, and that record protects you at resale and on an insurance claim. We pull it, book the inspection and hand you the paperwork. The city sets its fee once it sees the scope, so that fee sits outside the quote.
We warranty our installations for a year and stand behind our work. Typically manufacturers would offer a limited lifetime warranty or 10 year warranty on their products (you would need to refer to each manufacturer for their respective warranties). After twelve months we still come out. There is simply a charge for the visit. When it turns out to be a factory problem, our office files the claim for you.
Pick whichever one matches where you are.
Family owned in Palm Desert since 1986, license CSLB #906636, and our own crews fit your windows and doors from Palm Springs out to Indio. If you are 65 or older, California gives you five days to cancel after you sign, and that goes in writing with the contract. Or call (760) 773-1053.
