Buildings consume plenty of power for providing thermal and visual comfort inside the buildings. This paper aims at presenting the experimental results of spectral optical properties of the most widely used window glazing materials. The window glazing materials studied include clear glazing, bronze glazing, green glazing and grey coloured glazing materials. A Matlab code employing the British standard method was developed to compute transmittance and reflectance of window glasses at normal incidence angle. This code uses experimentally obtained spectral optical property data from Perkin Elmer lambda 950 spectrophotometer for the computation of transmission and reflection of window glasses. A computer program was developed for computing the total solar radiation passing through glass materials. The heat gain through different glass windows of eight coordinal orientations such as east, west, north, south, northeast, northwest, southeast and southwest in four climatic zones of India was investigated. The solar radiation through south oriented glass was found to be the least among all other orientations studied in four Indian climatic zones. The cooling load through south oriented bronze, glass, green glass and grey glass window were reduced by 23%, 31% and 37%, respectively, as compared to the south oriented clear glass window in four climatic zones of India. The grey glass window is observed to be the most energy efficient as it reduces maximum cooling loads within the building as compared to the other considered glazing materials. The results of this paper are helpful in designing energy efficient commercial buildings for reduced cooling loads. © 2017 The Authors.