FBS Articles - Ballistic

Designing the luxury home of your dreams can be an overwhelming prospect. Even purchasing an existing home and remodeling it to fit your own aesthetic creates an endless string of decisions that can quickly lead to enormity paralysis. This is a major reason you have a team of designers and architects — they can help you narrow things down and only show you options that will suit the overall vision. Somewhere in all these choices will be doors — do you want double doors, single doors, or pivot doors? It’s very possible that you’ve never given much thought to doors up until this point, let alone did you know how many options would be available to you once you got here. But nevertheless, here y...

Luxury homes should be flawless sanctuaries. Home is where you go after a long day (or week) at work to relax and unwind. It’s the place where you shouldn’t have to worry about something being off. After all, you’ve certainly paid enough for it — it shouldn’t be anything less than perfection. And part of that perfection is making it completely secure. One of the weak points of any home is the garage. Luxury homes are likely to be made with more durable materials than builder’s grade homes, but even so, it’s an opening (or two or three) to your home that isn’t entirely secure. Between the garage door, a regular man-door as a side entrance to your garage, and a fire door leading into your home...

Many of our clients want security windows, and they specifically come to us because they don’t want to resort to installing wrought iron security bars on the flawless façade of their luxury home. We get it. You shouldn’t have to compromise, and you definitely shouldn’t need to feel like you’re behind bars when you’re at home. While wrought iron can certainly feel luxurious (such as a fence on the outskirts of your property), it somehow loses its luster when placed over windows on a luxury home. It’s what you expect to see on homes close to city centers and apartment buildings in New York City. This is where our discussions begin. Our clients need security windows, but they have discerning ta...

Because the word “ballistic” is in our name, people often call us to inquire about turning their home into a bulletproof fortress. In times of uncertainty or high stress, people become more aware of inherent danger around them. (For the record, we can make your home bulletproof, if that’s what you want or need.) The thing is, when people who are concerned about their safety — and more importantly, the safety of their family — hear the words “bulletproof windows,” they typically love the idea. Before they know any details or realize the architectural or financial implications, they want bulletproof windows. It sounds like ballistic windows will make your luxury home the safest place you could...

We don’t look at windows as “windows,” per se. We look at them as glass doors. Windows are an opening in a home in the exact same way a door is — it’s a way for someone to enter or exit. In our eyes, the only differences between doors and windows are the dimensions of the opening (sometimes) and the materials used (again, sometimes). However, we fully understand that our clients don’t necessarily see it that way. They see doors as entrance and exit points that can be designed and adorned in whatever way they want, and windows as a thing that shows them their spectacular view. Perhaps, also as a thing they can open to let a fresh breeze in. Therefore, they’re sometimes dismayed at how expensi...