Scope of Work
A fixed shower panel for a walk-in shower in a Hudson Square apartment in Manhattan. The bathroom is tiled floor to ceiling in white marble-look porcelain with a grey mosaic shower floor, and the owner wanted the shower screened from the toilet and vanity without a door and without clear glass. The answer was reeded glass: the vertical flutes let the light through, blur what is behind them, and give the room a line that the plain tile does not have. We supplied and installed one full-height panel in a slim brushed-metal frame.
The Problem: Reeded Glass Cannot Be Tempered
Shower glass has to be safety glass, and in most showers that means tempered glass. Reeded glass is a rolled pattern glass: the flutes are pressed into the surface while the sheet is still soft, so one face is ribbed and the thickness varies across every flute. That uneven surface cannot go through a tempering furnace evenly, and the pattern glass available to us is not offered tempered. A plain reeded panel, then, is annealed glass, and annealed glass in a shower is not acceptable.
The Solution: Laminate Over the Reeded Glass
The way to make reeded glass a safety glass is to laminate it: the reeded lite is bonded with a clear interlayer to a second lite of glass, the way a windshield is made. If the panel is ever broken, the fragments stay bonded to the interlayer instead of falling, which is exactly what a safety glass is for. The flutes face the shower side so the smooth face is toward the room, and the laminated make-up adds stiffness, which matters on a panel this tall that is held only at its edges. The result is the look of reeded glass with the safety of laminated glass. See tempered vs laminated vs heat-strengthened glass for how the three compare.
Frame and Installation
A laminated panel has an exposed interlayer at its edges, so the edge is best protected. Here the panel sits in a slim brushed-metal perimeter frame that covers all four edges, anchors to the tiled wall and the curb, and keeps the hardware to a thin line around the glass rather than clamps on the face of it. The frame returns the panel to the wall at the shower-head side and leaves the entry open at the other. The photograph was taken straight after installation, with the small protective pads still on the glass; these come off on the final clean.
Photographs
Photographed after installation in October 2026, before the protective pads were removed.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Shower panels · Laminated glass · Tempered glass · Tempered vs laminated vs heat-strengthened · Decorative glass gallery: reeded, rain, obscured · Frameless shower doors · Tribeca: velour acid-etched shower door · Lenox Hill: extra-clear frameless shower
Planning Something Similar?
Want reeded, fluted or patterned glass in a shower? Send us a photo of the bathroom and the opening size. We will tell you which patterns are available, how the panel is made safe, and price it supplied or installed.