Don’t you love the charming appearance of your historic home in Indianapolis?
Owners of historic properties enjoy effortless curb appeal, unique architecture, and excellent craftsmanship. Still, there is just one problem with living in an older home. When it comes time for upgrades, repairs, or replacement, it can be tough to maintain the home’s historic integrity with modern brands and materials.
Exterior upgrades, like windows, can be one of the most challenging elements to match in a historic property. Fortunately, Pella offers windows with excellent performance and the features you need to fit a period home perfectly.
How Does Pella Blend Classic Features with Modern Upgrades for Top-Tier Performance?
Energy Efficiency
Most historic window frames are built with solid, sturdy wood like pine, fir, or mahogany. Wood is an exceptional insulator, so it provides reliable insulation to keep your home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And wood is not only an outstanding insulator—it is also a classic, traditional material with inviting appeal, making it a no-brainer for historic window replacement.
Pella offers energy-efficient wood windows designed explicitly for historic homes in the Pella Reserve Series. Not only are these windows made with classic, insulating wood, but they also offer other features to boost energy savings:
- Triple-Pane Glass — Many historic homes have thin, single-pane windows. Triple-pane windows have dense gases between the panes to slow the heat transfer between your cozy home and the elements.
- Low-E Glass — This invisible glass coating is designed to reduce the amount of ultraviolet and infrared light that enters your glass panes without minimizing the amount of light that enters your house.
Lasting Durability
Wood might be an excellent insulator and a historically accurate material. Still, the reason that many homeowners end up needing to replace their windows is actually because of the wood frame. Wood attracts pests and is prone to damage from the elements, including moisture damage, rotting, fading, cracking, and corrosion. So, while wood is a beautiful material and a reliable insulator, exposed wood won’t last long in climates that experience rain, snow, and storms.
Pella believes you shouldn’t have to sacrifice the authentic appeal of natural wood windows to protect them from the elements. They offer aluminum cladding for wood windows, called EnduraClad, to protect them from chalking, fading, and moisture damage. This exterior finish comes in several colors, including black, white, brown, red, and green, so you can perfectly preserve your property’s appearance while giving your windows a major upgrade in durability.
Architectural Details
It can be challenging to find historically accurate replacement windows, right? With so many different elements to consider, from the more obvious window material and style to the more nuanced grilles (window grids) and hardware—finding a modern product that will preserve the historic integrity of your home can feel like an impossible endeavor!
Fortunately, Pella offers two traditional-style product lines specifically designed for historic homes—the Pella Reserve Series and the Architect Series. These are the features that make these windows ideal for historic homes.
Pella Reserve
Pella Reserve windows come in several styles, including casement, awning, single-hung, double-hung, picture, monumental-hung, arched, corner, and more, to help you find the perfect match for your historic home. All windows in this product line also include the following features to provide the most accurate detailing for period-style properties:
- Putty Profile — Older windows are surrounded by a bead of putty to seal out drafts and hold the glass in place. Though modern windows don’t need putty for practical purposes, Pella still recreates the putty profile of historic windows in this product line to provide the realistic depth, dimension, and angles that putty creates.
- Integral Light Technology — The hallmark grilles on older windows were created with separate glass panes (lights) held together with wooden dividers (muntins). To provide greater efficiency while maintaining historic appeal, Pella offers grilles with foam spacers that capture the look of divided-light windows without inefficiencies.
- Authentic Hardware — Finding window hardware that is authentic to the period of your historic home is a small (but important!) detail. Pella offers historically authentic spoon-lock window hardware inspired by period furniture in this product line to deliver a timeless ambiance with functional durability.
Architect Series
Pella’s Architect Series is also an excellent choice for historic homes. Though this series lacks the same attention to historical detail as Pella Reserve, it still offers windows made from beautiful, long-lasting wood with stunning hardware and finely detailed sash and grille profiles to provide a timeless look that will complement most older properties.
The Architect Series is offered in awning, casement, double-hung, single-hung, picture, and bay and bow window styles. Windows in this series are crafted with your home’s specifications in mind—an excellent perk for homeowners with historical specifications and concerns.
Pella Windows: Where Unbeatable Performance Meets Historic Integrity
When the windows on your historic home become drafty, rotted, or drab—choose replacement windows that will preserve the historic integrity of your home while also helping you avoid these problems in the future.
JD Hostetter & Associates installs historically accurate windows from Pella for homeowners in Indianapolis and the surrounding area. We’re a Pella Elite Platinum Certified Contractor, so you can rest assured that our high standards for installation that earned us this title will translate into beautiful, durable, long-lasting windows for your historic home.
Learn more about the benefits of Pella windows and our window installation services so you have all the information you need when you’re ready to get started on your window replacement with our local team at JD Hostetter & Associates!
