Contrast marking for glass doors: the requirement most often missed

A transparent door is an obstacle you cannot see. And not only for people with visual impairments: people with normal sight walk into glass panels regularly — at dusk, in poor lighting, phone in hand, child in arms. The difference is that for a person with low vision this is not an inconvenience but a daily risk of injury.

A contrast strip on the glass removes the problem in the simplest way available: it makes the transparent visible.

This is not decoration — it is a building code requirement

Ukraine's accessibility code ДБН В.2.2-40:2018 ("Inclusivity of Buildings and Structures") explicitly requires transparent door leaves to be marked:

Strip height — at least 0.1 m
Strip width — the full width of the door opening (cl. 8.4.2.4); the minimum under cl. 6.1.3 is 0.2 m
Mounting height — within 1.0–1.5 m from floor level
A transparent façade alongside? The door is then additionally marked around the perimeter of the opening with a strip from 0.1 m

We produce marking for your specific door opening, not a standard size that almost fits. Send us the leaf width and you receive a strip that meets the requirement rather than approaching it.

Why reflective film

The code requires contrast. Reflectivity is what we add on top, and in Ukrainian conditions it matters:

• during power outages the strip stays visible in torchlight or emergency lighting;
• at dusk and at night, when a plain painted strip merges with the glass;
• under side lighting, when glare across the pane washes out any marking.

The high-visibility yellow is not an aesthetic choice: it remains distinguishable under most forms of colour vision deficiency and delivers high contrast against both light and dark backgrounds behind the glass.

Where it goes

Shop, café and pharmacy entrances. Glass doors in schools, inclusive resource centres, hospitals, public service centres and banks. Internal glass partitions in corridors and recreation areas. Automatic sliding doors are a distinct high-risk case: they open without human action, making the moving leaf even harder to notice.

Installation — self-adhesive film applied to a cleaned, degreased surface, no special tools required.

What door marking does not replace. Plainly: one strip on a door does not make a building accessible. The code also governs tactile paving on approaches, ramps and handrails, tactile signs with Braille, opening widths and sanitary facilities. Glass marking is mandatory, but it is one element. If you are bringing a site into compliance, start with an audit rather than a single item — we can help draw up the list.