What do we need to know about window tinting?

January 27, 2013 6:30 PM

My partner and I want to get a car window tint job. We're more concerned about quality (materials, won't bubble, etc.) than price, so what do we need to look for? One well reputed company in town is offering "basic color stable film," "high performance stable film" and "CTX ceramic," in ascending order of cost, but we don't know one from the other. One company offers LLumar and another offers 3M--how do we choose? Is quality more or less proportional to cost? Look for a lifetime warranty? Is ceramic the preferred material? Any advice would be appreciated.
posted by jroybal to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

This is just general advice, but if you have not done so already, make sure to look up what the window tint laws are in your state. Some places (like New York City) aggressively enforce tint laws because police officers cannot see into a vehicle that they pull over - and thus those vehicles are a potential threat to their lives, which police officers tend to get annoyed by - so if you get a tint job that exceeds the legal limits, you can get ticketed on a regular basis.
posted by wolfdreams01 at 6:42 PM on January 27, 2013 [3 favorites]

I agree on watching installations.

My second recommendation would be go to ask this on a car enthusiast forum. Autopia.org might be a good starting point, or maybe a manufacturer-specific forum if you have a car that lends itself to that (Bimmerfest, Audiworld, 6SpeedOnline, etc).. Those people are meticulous about their cars, and almost surely know about subtleties that most of us here don't. (Though I will say that reading that site sometimes makes me more paranoid than I really want to be about taking care of my car.....)
posted by primethyme at 8:19 PM on January 27, 2013

My truck and my wife's cars are tinted with LLumar. We chose that over the 3M based on the installer's recommendations for matching the stock tint on the rear windows - but as I recall, the costs were similar and they both perform well. We've been really happy with it.
posted by Pogo_Fuzzybutt at 8:35 PM on January 27, 2013

Go with the best company in town -- sounds like you found it already, but you might also get recommendations from local car dealerships. FWIW, I'm pretty sure I have 3M on one of my cars and it's nice.
posted by puritycontrol at 10:05 AM on January 28, 2013

Echoing wolfdreams01, (and assuming you're in the US), I would also check out the window-tint laws of your neighbor states—it would be a pain to know that you couldn't drive out of your state without risking getting pulled over and ticketed.
posted by blueberry at 10:02 AM on February 3, 2013