Hokua - 1288 Ala Moana Blvd, Honolulu, HI 96814

The building

Hokua stands at 1288 Ala Moana Boulevard, on the ocean side of the road in Kakaako — one of the towers that began the redevelopment of that stretch, and one of the first to be glazed corner to corner as the product rather than as a feature.

When the glass is the whole wall

In a unit like this there is no wall of the living space that is not glass, and therefore no hour of the day when some part of the home is not in sun. The south and west faces take the afternoon, and the last hour before sunset is the one that gets underneath every overhang and lanai in the building.

At this level of finish the expensive damage is the slow kind. Wide-plank hardwood, wool and silk, stone that discolours unevenly, and art on the walls. Owners will generally not use blinds, because an unobstructed view is the entire reason the unit exists — which means the sun is not being stopped by anything at all.

There is a technical trap here as well. Floor-to-ceiling glazing in a modern Honolulu tower is usually already tinted, and often already carries a low-emissivity coating. Putting a heat-absorbing film onto a heat-absorbing pane raises the temperature gradient across the glass, and on annealed or partially shaded units that is how a pane cracks. It is entirely avoidable, but only by identifying the existing make-up before specifying anything.

What window film does about it

The right film for a tower like this is a high-transmission spectrally selective one: non-metallic, close to neutral in color, low in reflectance, rejecting most of the near infrared and effectively all of the ultraviolet while passing enough visible light that nobody in the room can tell it is there. The heat comes out of the afternoon; the view does not change.

Two things worth knowing before it goes on. Film is fitted with a water-based solution and it takes days, occasionally a few weeks in humid weather, to dry out completely — small hazy patches or water pockets during that period are normal and clear on their own. And any film is slightly visible at a glancing angle from inside; on good film that is the only clue there is.

The glare case is as strong as the heat one here and gets mentioned less. For the last hour of the day the sun sits on the water directly in the line of the view, and the ocean behind it doubles the brightness. That is the hour the unit was bought for and the hour it is least usable, and it is the reason so many oceanfront living rooms have the sheers drawn at sunset. Bringing visible transmission down on the makai glazing turns that hour back into something you can sit through without closing anything.

Sliding lanai doors deserve a note of their own, because they are usually the largest single panes in the home, they are tempered rather than annealed, and they are the panel people stand next to. They are also where the difference is felt first.

We film individual residences and whole buildings along Ala Moana. See our residential work or request a quote.