When installing or upgrading your home, the question often arises, “Which wire should be used where?” This may seem like a small question, but is in fact a very intricate matter for efficiency as well as safety. Among the cables, there’s a long going debate on the use of shielded or unshielded cables. Here, we tend to break down the differences between these two cables. 

Screened Wires are those twisted pair cables that have either copper wire braid, aluminum Mylar tape or aluminum wire as a screen between different twisted pairs inside the main insulation. This screen helps in reduction of electromagnetic interference. Now, how this factor is decided if we want to use a screened or unscreened type of wire? The answer is where the wire is laid, whether it coincides with elements like motors, generators, air conditioners or even printers or fluorescent lamps. These devices cause electromagnetic interference and can produce “noise” during current or even data transmission. Hence for these applications, shielding is an important element. The higher quality shielded wires consist of a drain wire, which carries the effects of electromagnetic interference to the ground, and dissipates the excessive noise to the ground. Not only the wire but the couplers and jacks used in these wires are carefully shielded in order to prevent any possible shield leak, whatsoever. The major reasons why these wires are not always used are, one, they are expensive to manufacture, and two, they are less flexible than their unshielded doppelgangers. 

Unscreened Twisted Pair Cables, on the other hand, are easy to manufacture and also cost effective, as the sheath/shield is mostly made of pure aluminium or copper, which in turn, reduces the cost of the wire. Unshielded wires contain only the twisted pairs with the main outer sheath/insulation. 

No matter what wire you use, always choose the high quality ones, as even if you choose shielded cables for the entire house, it won’t make sense if it’s shield is low quality and could leak the electromagnetic interference. 

For the shielded and unshielded cables, there are very limited number of quality products in india. But the ones from Prime Cables Industries Pvt. Ltd. Are known to be the best in the business. They provide solid, stranded, circular annealed, bare or tinned copper wires of various sizes like 1.5 sq. mm, 2.5 sq. mm, 4.0 sq. mm. Their insulation is color coded and made of high quality PVC, the wire itself is made of high conductivity copper. For screened wires they use  Copper Wire Braid, Aluminium Mylar tape or Aluminium Wire as shield. They provide a very high-quality range of products which features a special PVC compound which is Lead Free, Heat Resistant (LFHR) and Flame Retardant (FR). Prime Cables are the only wire products in India to be made using Lead Free PVC, which makes them non-toxic and completely safe for users as well as installers. Prime Cables offer you wires with Lead Free properties at Zero Additional Cost . These wires can last you a lifetime without breaking a sweat in summers or losing it’s conductivity in Winters. For a cable of this quality, we don’t have to think twice even for spending a little extra. But the best part about these cables is, they cost less than their competition, which makes them a no brainer choice for your next renovation project!