We have charcoal fiberglass. When looking out, you can barely tell that screening is there. When looking in, you really don't see the screen either as the mesh is pretty fine. We have ultimate double hung, all wood Marvins. Our house in the area of these windows is light beige painted cedar siding and the window trim is white. No regrets.

We have Atrium vinyl replacement windows (all sliders) with charcoal fiberglas screens. Looking out from inside of the house you cannot tell there are screens on the windows. Fiberglas screen material bounces back, aluminum creases if twinked. Fiberglas, definitely!

Our So. Cal. stucco house is painted off white (DE - Phoenix Villa) and vinyl window trim is white and other (wood) house trim is white (DE - White Whisper).

Thanks Kec and Teedup! Looks like charcoal fiberglass it is.

Glad not to have to go through a whole new round of obsessing after finally having picked the windows. You guys have saved me a lot of angst!

-ff

Hi there. We chose the black aluminum wire. The fiberglass mesh seemed to darken visibility too much plus the Marvin dealer confessed it wasn't as good as the Andersen's tru-scene mesh. Another dealer mentioned that the fiberglass mesh does tend to collect more debris than the aluminum. I noticed when I looked outside through the various Marvin aluminum wire samples, the outside looked brighter and crisper than through the mesh. When I looked at the samples from outdoors, the black aluminum seemed a lot more subtle than the glaring bright silver and bronze wire. The charcoal wire seemed dull. We are also only getting half screens so our prairie style grills on the top sash can be seen from the outside. Because losing light is a concern of mine, we are going with the wire as well as Low E179 glass...more solar gain and VT than Marvin's (Cardinal) Standard Low E 272.

We went with the bright aluminum. I just liked the look of them and on the casements it looked better with the satin nickle hardware.

Aluminum wire is more susceptible to damage (i.e. "denting") than the other material. I prefer the high transparency over the others. It isn't very impressive in the small comparative samples and looks better in real life situations on your home. With double hungs, I also like the option of half screens only. Especially if you have divided lites in the top sash only.