Tempered or laminated safety glass provides added strength and safety to your handrails. When adding glass handrails to the balcony or stairwell of your home or business, you want the safest and strongest options available. Ryan’s all-glass uses only tempered or laminated glass for handrails, because either glass withstands more pressure than regular glass. After undergoing the process of heat treatment and the pressure cooling process of quenching, tempered glass becomes, on average, more than 4 to 5 times stronger than traditional glass. The process also changes the structure of the glass, allowing tempered glass to shatter in a safer way, which means tempered glass does not break into sharp pieces, but shatters into relatively small, safe pieces. Laminated glass offers the same level of safety in that two pieces of glass ‘sandwich’ a piece of vinyl inner layer. In the event of breaking, it is held together by the inner layer.