It matters more than most people expect. A single-hung window has a fixed top sash and a bottom sash that slides up, giving a traditional look; a casement cranks outward on a hinge and seals by compressing against the frame, which generally gives it a higher design pressure ceiling and better resistance to wind-driven rain at the same size. For a standard-sized bedroom or living room window, either can usually meet code — the choice comes down to look and ventilation preference. On a larger or more exposed opening, casement or fixed styles often become the more practical choice because they can hit the pressure rating the location actually requires.

No, and in most well-engineered projects they shouldn't be identical. Corners, upper floors, and more exposed elevations generally need a higher design pressure rating than a sheltered ground-floor opening on the same house. Specifying one uniform "high" rating for every window is sometimes done for simplicity, but it usually means paying premium pricing on openings that never needed it — matching each window to its actual calculated pressure is typically the more cost-efficient approach.

Yes, you can phase a window project by room or by floor. The one code detail to know: if you replace more than 25% of your home's glazed openings within a rolling 12-month period, all of those openings have to meet current code, which is rarely an issue for impact glass but is worth knowing if you're phasing a large project deliberately.

Often somewhat bigger, but it's opening-specific. Enlarging a window means altering the rough opening in the wall, which can involve structural review of the header above it, not just a product swap — we evaluate that during the on-site survey rather than promising a size increase before seeing the wall.

Not dramatically if matched thoughtfully. Impact glass is available in the same frame colors, grille patterns, and tint options as standard windows, and slimmer aluminum sightlines can actually show more glass than an older, bulkier frame. The main visual difference most homeowners notice is thicker glass — a subtle change, not an obvious one from the street.

Generally, yes, for two reasons: the crank mechanism pulls the sash tight against a compression seal rather than relying on a sliding track, and there's no track gap for wind-driven water to find its way through. That's why casements are common on higher-exposure openings even though horizontal sliders remain a perfectly code-compliant, lower-cost option on standard, less-exposed windows.

Impact glass is laminated — typically two panes of glass bonded around a plastic interlayer that's often somewhere in the 0.090- to 0.120-inch range or thicker on high-pressure applications, though exact specs vary by manufacturer and rating. Thicker isn't automatically better for every opening; the interlayer and outer glass are engineered together to hit a specific tested design pressure, so the right thickness is the one that matches your opening's rating, not the maximum available.

Tint and Low-E coatings are applied to the glass surface and don't change the structural laminate that carries the impact and pressure rating, so you can select tint for glare or privacy without affecting code compliance — just confirm the specific tinted product still carries its own current NOA or Florida Product Approval number, since tint changes are technically a different tested configuration.