Stained glass is a wonderfully artistic medium.  The glass that is coloured and artfully designed to portray an image, a scene, a landscape, brings brilliant light into a room, flooding it with colour and lightness.  But there is also this about stained glass; while it conveys light in a most magnificent manner, it also conveys the heat that the light-energy from the sun carries with it.

And if windows exposed to sunlight are capable of exhibiting stained glass to optimum aesthetic effect, they are also capable of introducing heat, sometimes at a time when it is not particularly appreciated.  In the winter months that introduction of heat into a closed environment is a bonus.  In the summer months, obviously it is detrimental to comfort.

And then there is the not-inconsiderable matter of the sun's harmful UV rays, helpfully brought along by those bursts of brilliant light, so wonderful to behold, but shining day after day on the light-sensitive canvas of a painting, or even fabrics, has a sorely detrimental effect to their longevity.

So much as we were loath to do so, we found it an imperative to preserve the integrity of the paintings whose aesthetic we also value, by covering the stained glass with sheer draperies.  They work very well to reduce the heat transfer substantially, and to halt the incursion of those UV rays on the walls of our living room.

In the process, of necessity we lose the brilliance of the colour.  On the other hand, the sheers can be moved aside on cloudy days or in the winter months when the UV rays are far less capable of causing damage.  We think.