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It’s hard to believe that I’ve had my 2020 Ford F-150 for five years and I still haven’t gotten the windows tinted. After moving to Southern California, I knew I would definitely need the windows tinted to block out the UV rays and to keep the heat out as well. Adding the window tint will also be able to balance out the odd look of the front windows being clear white the rear ones are darker from the colored glass.
Window Tint Options
Whenever presented with window tint options, I’ve usually opted for the standard tint offerings, but I’ve always been curious about the supposed benefits of ceramic tint. Usually, window tints offer a high level of ultraviolet ray protection. My biggest concern is the UV protection, but ceramic tints have always been advertised to reject heat a lot better than others. Since we experience quite a bit of heat here in Southern California, I decided to splurge a little more and go with the ceramic window tint.
Other things to consider with window tint is the darkness of the tint and which windows to tint. I suspected that the existing colored glass (from the factory) on the rear windows was around 20%-30%. I still wanted to tint the rear windows, but also tint the fronts to match. There is a formula to follow if you want to figure out what combined tints would look like. This works for combined tints, but for tint over colored glass as well.
[OEM colored glass tint %] x [new overlaid window tint % / 100%] = overall window tint %
So let’s say my VLT for the colored glass in the back is 25%. I knew that I wanted my front windows to be around 35% VLT. So, if I’m calculating the rear windows to try to match the fronts, I would try to calculate the tint on the rears over the colored glass to get somewhere near 35% VLT.
Unfortunately, I didn’t run this calculation ahead of time, so when I was at the tint shop, I got a 50% VLT on the rear, so it ended up darker than I wanted. The only other lighter tint the shop offered was 70% VLT, so I probably should have gone with that instead. If I had gone with 70% over the colored glass, the rear windows would have resulted in 17.5% VLT.
[25%] x [70%/100%] = 17.5% VLT
I ended up going with a front VLT tint of 35%. I didn’t want the front window tint to be too dark, as I didn’t want to get pulled over for having too dark of a tint. However, I did want some level of darkness to match better with the rear windows.
Getting the Windows Tint on my 2020 Ford F-150
The process of getting the tint done was straight-forward. I dropped off my truck at the shop for 2-3 hours to have the tint installed. I removed all the car seats I had in the back seat, and tried to clean the windows best I could before dropping the truck off. This should make it easier for installers to work and make for a better install of the tint.
I was pretty pleased wth the outcome of the tint. As I mentioned, the rear window tint of 50% VLT on top of the factory colored glass resulted in a bit darker of a tint than the front window tint of 35% VLT. Next time, I would probably go with the 70% VLT over the colored glass for a better match. As far as the heat rejection goes, I do notice a moderate difference in terms of how much heat I can feel coming through the tinted glass. It doesn’t completely block out heat, but it does reject a noticeable amount.
Here are the before and after photos of the ceramic window tint. The left photos are the before, and the right photos are the after. Hope this helps you if you’re looking to get your windows tinted and want to get an idea of what this tint ended up looking like or compare it to other window tint options.
2020 Ford F-150 XLT Supercrew
Johnson Films IR Ceramic Tint
50% VLT rear windows & back window, 35% front windows, none on windshield
