PROJECT POST
September 14, 2026
La La Land Cafe sits on North Kierland Boulevard in North Scottsdale, inside the 85254 ZIP code, and like a lot of cafe spaces built around glass, one wall does most of the work. The windows face east. From sunrise through late morning that glass takes the Arizona sun straight on, and the heat coming through it had become impossible to ignore. The owners found AZ Max Tint through a Google search and asked about commercial window tinting that could stop the heat without darkening the storefront.
The answer was Panorama Hi-Lite 70, installed across every eastern-exposure window in the cafe.
The brief from the owner was short. Stop the heat.
East-facing glass has a particular problem, and it is not the same one a west wall has. The sun hits it early and hits it low. Low-angle light comes in almost horizontally, sliding under the awnings, overhangs and shade structures that would block a higher midday sun completely. There is nothing between the glass and the sun but air.
By late morning the glass is warm, the air sitting against it is warm, and the tables closest to the windows become the least comfortable seats in the room. Air conditioning can fight it, but an air conditioner is always reacting to heat that is already inside the building. The only way to get ahead of it is to stop the heat at the glass.
The Valley gets sun most days of the year and long stretches of genuine extreme heat. A commercial space in Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Tempe or Phoenix with a large unshaded window wall is, in practical terms, a solar collector pointed at its own customers.
For a restaurant or cafe that heat lands in three places at once: on the guests sitting near the glass, on the staff working the front of house, and on the cooling system that has to remove it again. It is the same dynamic we cover in our article on how commercial window tinting can lower cooling costs for Arizona businesses. Glass is where the heat gets in, so glass is where it makes sense to deal with it.
Two things had to be true for this project to work.
The first was obvious: reduce the solar heat coming through the eastern windows. The second mattered just as much. A cafe storefront is advertising. People walk past, look in, see a room they want to sit in, and come through the door. A dark film would have handled the heat and cost the cafe its visibility from the sidewalk and the parking area.
Panorama Hi-Lite 70 was proposed and selected because it does the solar work while keeping the glass light and the view into the cafe intact. That combination, heat reduction without losing visibility, is the reason this product was the right call for this building rather than a darker and more conventional heat film.
Tom Vanderhoof and Damon handled the install, covering the full eastern exposure of the cafe.
Commercial storefront glass is unforgiving work. The panes are large, they are visible from every angle inside and out, and anything trapped under the film shows. Each pane on the east side was cleaned down to bare glass, the film cut to fit that opening, and the panel set and squeegeed out so the finished surface reads clean. Working in an operating cafe also means leaving the space ready for service at the end of the day.
Those are the priorities on most storefront and office window film projects in Arizona, where comfort and heat control usually come first.
The eastern windows at La La Land Cafe are filmed end to end, and the film is doing its work exactly where the heat was coming from. The storefront still reads as glass. From the walkway you can see into the room the same way you always could, which for a cafe is not a small detail.
If you run a restaurant, cafe, office or retail space anywhere in the Phoenix metro and one elevation is beating you up every morning or every afternoon, it is a solvable problem. Our full range of window film options covers heat, glare, UV and privacy for commercial and residential buildings alike.
If heat, glare, UV exposure, privacy or excessive sunlight is making your Phoenix-area home or commercial property less comfortable, AZ Max Tint can help you find the right window film for your space.
Call AZ Max Tint: (480) 913-5889
Contact AZ Max Tint: https://azmaxtint.com/contact
For directions to AZ Max Tint, just click here.
Driving directions from the Kierland area of North Scottsdale to AZ Max Tint at 3734 E Kristal Way, Phoenix, AZ 85050.
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