Imagine standing in an elevator that looks like wood, but isn’t made of wood. Or an elevator filled with a vibrant blue color that will never fade. Both of these are possible thanks to glass.

An elevator is likely the smallest room in a building. But, for a few minutes, it holds a captive audience. Architects, designers, and building managers understand that these small spaces are big opportunities to create a lasting impression.

“In speaking with customers and designers, we kept hearing that they wanted to use glass,” said Caleb Morrison, Vice President, SnapCab. “It is a beautiful material, with a clean, elegant, high-end look.”

“The challenge was finding a glass composition that could meet weight regulations for the elevator industry and maintain a high-quality look over time.”

The answer was a tough, chemically-strengthened glass.

With durable glass, elevators and other interior walls become scratch- and damage-resistant, are easy-to-clean, and require minimal maintenance. The glass is also extremely lightweight, which is a huge benefit in the elevator market.

“Elevator cabs are getting lighter, and we are striving to make the installation and the entire system faster and more efficient,” said Caleb. “The thin, lightweight characteristics of glass allow us to complete projects we previously would not have been able to consider.”

One example is the application of solid wood or stainless steel. Many customers tend to gravitate toward these materials, but they are very susceptible to scratches and dings.

“We substitute these materials for durable, lightweight glass printed with the image of wood or laminated to stainless steel,” explained Caleb. “This allows for a finished product that not only meets customer and industry requirements, but offers a more elegant, damage-resistant surface.”

The optical clarity of glass addresses a common issue architects and designers face with color matching. With glass, colors are accurate, incredibly vibrant, and will not fade or deteriorate over time. Matching white can be especially challenging, but chemically-strengthened glass renders “true white” without showing shades of blue or amber.

“Glass is a beautiful material, with a clean, elegant, high-end look. It allows designers and architects to create a lobby or elevator interior that is durable and scratch resistant with incredibly vibrant images, patterns, and colors,” said Caleb.

Glass can be printed or laminated to panels and integrated into SnapCab’s modular wall systems, providing even more benefits to installers and building owners. Unlike conventional custom elevator jobs, which could take up to three days to install, SnapCab’s modular panels simply fit into place for a smooth, fast installation process.

In addition, the modular panels seamlessly fit the glass pieces all together. This enables designers to easily replace one or all the panels inside an elevator with a new look at a much lower cost and quick turnaround.

What’s next? You might start to see more elevator interiors lined with interactive touch screens and active displays. Advanced lighting, improved acoustics, and new uses of glass could be creating a new-level of ambience inside the next-generation of elevators.

“Glass opens the possibilities for companies and architects to consider an elevator as not just the smallest room in a building, but as an experience,” said Caleb.

Corning^® Gorilla^® Glass is the glass product being used by SnapCab^® in elevator and interior architecture applications.