Amber Glass: How Much UV It Blocks and When You Need It

Amber glass is basically sunglasses for your product. It blocks most of the light that breaks down essential oils, beer, and skincare, and like any good pair of sunglasses, it makes whatever’s behind it a little harder to see. That’s the whole trade, and for a lot of products it’s an easy one to make.

Where Amber Glass Gets Its Color

Amber glass is regular glass with a little iron and sulfur mixed in at the furnace. That combination turns the glass brown and lets it soak up UV light, so the color and the protection come as a set. Since the color is part of the glass itself, it won’t scratch off, peel, or fade in the dishwasher.

The shade can drift a bit from batch to batch. The listing for our 9 oz amber jar describes its color as “light amber to nearly black,” which is about as dramatic as a product spec gets. Life’s like a pallet of amber glass bottles, you never know what you’re going to get.

How Glass Absorbs UV Light

UV light carries enough energy to break molecules apart, which is how sunlight fades the couch by your window, weakens vitamins, and nudges a nice essential oil toward smelling like something you’d clean a garage with. The longer a light-sensitive product sits in it, the more of that damage adds up.

Plain glass absorbs the shortest, most energetic UV rays on its own, which is why you won’t get much of a sunburn sitting next to a window. The longer UV rays (the ones fading that couch) pass right through, along with the visible blue light that can also wear products down.

Amber picks up where clear glass leaves off. The iron and sulfur in the glass soak up nearly all of the remaining UV and a good share of the blue light, turning it into a tiny, harmless amount of heat before it ever reaches your product. That’s also why amber looks the way it does: the warm glow you see is the light that made it through, minus the blue that didn’t. Much like reality TV stars, Amber glass throws shade for a living.

How Amber Glass Compares to Other Glass Colors

Of the glass colors you’ll find on a shelf, amber does the best job of keeping UV and blue light away from what’s inside, which is why you see it on everything from medicine bottles to six-packs. Green and blue glass look great, but they let through a lot of the light that does the damage (blue glass looks blue because it lets blue light through). Frosted glass hides the product nicely, but frosting mostly changes how the glass looks, so don’t count on it for UV protection. If you want even more protection, black-tinted amber blocks more light, at the cost of not being able to see how much product is left.

What Amber Glass Can’t Do

Amber glass blocks most of the light that causes damage, but six weeks on a sunny bathroom windowsill will still take a toll. Amber buys your product time, and cool, dark storage helps it go the distance.

Amber also can’t do anything about air, and air wears down oils and active ingredients right alongside light. Every time a lid comes off, a fresh breath of it gets in, so the glass handles the light, and a good closure (a dropper, a pump, or a well-lined cap) handles the air.

Amber Glass vs. Clear Glass

Choosing between amber and clear glass comes down to whether your product needs protecting or showing off.

Beer is the famous example. In strong sunlight, a tasting panel can pick up the skunky flavor in under ten seconds. Turns out the brown beer bottle is more than a branding choice.

If you love clear glass and your product is light-sensitive, a shrink sleeve, a full-wrap label, or a printed box will cover most of the bottle. It’s not as dependable as amber, but it beats counting on every customer to keep it in a drawer, which, historically, customers do not do. Even if you ask nicely.

Safety, Strength, and Recycling

Amber glass is safe for food, cosmetics, and medicine. It’s the same inert glass as clear glass, and the iron and sulfur that color it are locked into the glass. It won’t react with your product or leach into it.

If you’ve seen alarming posts about radioactive colored glass, those are about vintage uranium glass, the stuff collectors hunt down because it glows under a black light. Your amber bottle will not do that (thankfully.)

Amber is also no more fragile than clear glass, since it’s the same material in a different color. It’s perfectly happy on a shelf and deeply unhappy on a tile floor, like every glass bottle you’ve ever owned. And when your customer is done with it, it’s as recyclable as any other glass.

Amber Glass vs. Amber Plastic

Amber plastic is lighter and survives being dropped, which is handy if you ship direct or your product lives in a gym bag. Its light protection varies a lot from bottle to bottle, though. In lab tests, some amber plastic bottles pass the pharmaceutical standard and some don’t come close.

If light protection is the reason you’re choosing amber, glass is the safer bet. Concentrated essential oils can also be rough on some plastics, which is another reason oils usually end up in glass. (More on that in should essential oils go in glass or plastic?)

Choosing an Amber Bottle or Jar

• Pick the shape for how it’s used. Boston rounds, like our 1 oz amber Boston round, are the classic for oils and tinctures. Straight-sided jars work for creams and balms, just keep in mind that a wider mouth lets in more air every time the lid comes off.
• Match the closure. Droppers for serums, orifice reducers for essential oils, pumps for lotions, and a lined cap for nearly everything else. The cap has to match the bottle’s neck finish exactly (our neck finish guide decodes those numbers), and it’s worth checking that the liner or dropper bulb gets along with your formula. Our dropper guide covers the options.
• Size it for how fast it gets used. A bottle that’s empty in a month spends a lot less time half-full of air than one that hangs around the cabinet for a year.
• Design for a dark background. White, gold, and metallic inks pop on amber, whether they’re on a label or screen printed right onto the glass, and dark artwork disappears into it. We don’t print labels, but our design team can handle label design and file prep and coordinate with your printer.
• Go darker if you want. Our black amber Boston round blocks even more light and looks a little mysterious doing it.

Want to see how amber stacks up against the rest of the color wheel? Check out our colored glass guide, or get some ideas from 10 unique applications for amber glass jars.

Find the Right Amber Container

Yes, we sell a lot of amber glass, so you might expect this post to end with “buy amber.” But if your honey belongs in a clear jar, we’ll happily help you put it there. We don’t play favorites with the visible spectrum. If you can’t tell which camp your product falls in, ask us before you order.

Browse our amber glass bottles and amber glass jars, or call (800) 473-4144 and a real person will help you sort out color, size, and closure.