Glass · Handling
Glass weight calculator
Glass weighs 2.5 kg per square metre for every millimetre of thickness. So a 6 mm pane is 15 kg/m², and a 1.2 × 2.2 m sheet of it weighs 39.6 kg. The formula is weight = length × width × thickness × 2500 kg/m³. Laminated interlayers and the cavity of a double-glazed unit change the total, and this page accounts for both.
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How this is calculated
The cavity of an insulating unit is filled with air or argon, both of which weigh so little next to glass that they are ignored here — argon in a 16 mm cavity adds about 0.03 kg/m², which is under a tenth of a per cent. Spacers, sealant and coatings are likewise left out. In practice this calculation runs slightly under the real delivered weight, by roughly one to two per cent.
| Nominal thickness | Weight per m² | 1.2 × 2.2 m sheet |
|---|---|---|
| 4 mm | 10.0 kg/m² | 26.4 kg |
| 6 mm | 15.0 kg/m² | 39.6 kg |
| 8 mm | 20.0 kg/m² | 52.8 kg |
| 10 mm | 25.0 kg/m² | 66.0 kg |
| 12 mm | 30.0 kg/m² | 79.2 kg |
| 15 mm | 37.5 kg/m² | 99.0 kg |
| 19 mm | 47.5 kg/m² | 125.4 kg |
About the handling advice
The note under the results uses the common workplace guideline of about 25 kg per person for occasional two-handed lifting in a good posture, and assumes suction cups and a clear route. It is a rule of thumb to help you plan, not a legal limit: the real figure depends on your country's manual handling rules, the height of the lift, how far it is carried, the shape of the pane and whether there are stairs. Glass is also awkward and dangerous in a way that a box of the same weight is not — a 60 kg sheet that catches the wind is a two-person job whatever the arithmetic says.