Shower Doors

The Three Decisions That Matter

Glass Thickness

Shower glass is tempered without exception — the code requires safety glazing in and around bathing areas, and there is no route around it.

3/8″ is the workhorse for frameless enclosures. Rigid enough for most door and panel sizes, lighter on the hinges, and less expensive.

1/2″ is for larger panels, taller doors and anywhere the glass is a fixed panel spanning a wide opening. It feels noticeably more solid in use, and on a big enclosure the extra rigidity is what stops a door flexing as it swings.

Thickness also drives hardware. A 1/2″ door is materially heavier, which changes the hinge specification and the number of hinges — and heavy glass on undersized hinges is the most common cause of a door that sags and stops closing properly.

Frameless, Semi-Frameless or Framed

Frameless is thick tempered glass held by hinges and clips with no surrounding frame. Cleanest appearance, easiest to keep clean because there are no channels holding water, and the most demanding to install because the glass has to be cut to a tolerance the tiled opening rarely deserves.

Semi-frameless uses a channel on the fixed panel and leaves the door edges free. A sensible compromise where the opening is out of square.

Framed surrounds the glass with aluminium channel, allowing thinner glass and more tolerance. Cheaper, and the channels trap water and soap residue — which is what people are usually trying to escape when they ask for frameless.

How It Opens

Hinged gives the widest opening and the cleanest look. It needs swing clearance outside the enclosure, and the door must be able to open outward — a shower door that only opens inward can trap someone who falls against it.

Sliding or bypass on a header track needs no clearance, which is why it suits a bath enclosure or a small bathroom where a swinging door would foul the basin or the WC.

Fixed panel with a walk-in opening has no door at all. Works where the enclosure is deep enough that spray does not reach the opening, and it is the easiest of all to keep clean.

Neo-angle and corner entries suit a corner installation and need careful templating, because two walls out of square compound rather than cancel.

Why Enclosures Leak, and Why We Template

A shower enclosure is not watertight and is not meant to be. It is designed to contain spray and let the rest drain back inside. Leaks happen when that intent is broken, and the causes are consistent.

The opening is not square. Tiled walls are almost never plumb and almost never parallel. An enclosure cut to nominal dimensions will have a gap at one end. This is why we template on site after tiling is complete rather than working from the builder's dimensions — and why ordering glass before the tiling is finished is a false economy.

The threshold slopes the wrong way. The curb or the tray has to fall back into the enclosure. If it falls outward, no seal will hold the water.

Fixings into tile alone. Hinges carry real load and must be anchored into the substrate behind the tile, not into the tile itself. Tile will crack and the door will drop.

Missing or wrong seals. A door needs a sweep at the bottom and a seal at the vertical edges, sized for the actual gap. On a hinged door the gap changes along its length if the hinges are not aligned.

Steam enclosures are different. A steam room has to seal at the top as well, usually with a transom panel and a vent, because steam rises and escapes where a shower enclosure would simply be open. See steam room ventilation.

Keeping the Glass Looking New

The dulling people blame on cleaning products is usually hard water. Minerals deposit on the surface and, over time, etch into it — at which point no cleaner will recover it.

A factory-applied protective coating makes the surface hydrophobic so water beads and carries deposits away instead of drying on the glass. It is applied before installation, it is not a spray-on product, and it genuinely extends how long an enclosure looks new. On a low-iron enclosure, where the whole point is clarity, it is worth having. See our coatings page.

The other half is a squeegee. We say so because it is true, not because it is the answer people want.

Shower Enclosure Work Across the City

These describe the kind of work each area brings rather than any specific client project.

Upper East Side, Lenox Hill and Carnegie Hill

High-end apartment bathrooms where the enclosure is a visible design element against marble or pale stone. This is the clearest case for low-iron glass: at 3/8″ or 1/2″ the green cast of standard clear is obvious against white stone and makes the tiling look slightly off-colour. Access and building rules usually shape the programme as much as the work does.

Dyker Heights, Todt Hill and Manhattan Beach

Large houses with substantial bathrooms, frequently wanting oversized fixed panels and heavy hardware. At those panel sizes 1/2″ is usually right, and the hinge and support specification matters more than in a standard enclosure. In the coastal locations, stainless rather than plated hardware.

Brooklyn and Queens Brownstone and Rowhouse Bathrooms

Older buildings, smaller bathrooms, and walls that have moved over a century. Templating is not optional here — the out-of-square is often large enough that a semi-frameless approach with a channel on one side is the honest recommendation rather than forcing frameless and accepting a tapering gap.

Staten Island and New Jersey Renovations

Whole-bathroom renovation work where we are usually coordinating with a contractor rather than the homeowner. The critical point is programme: glass is templated after tiling and takes time to fabricate, so it belongs in the schedule rather than being ordered at the end.

Getting an Enclosure Quoted

Send us the opening dimensions and a photograph, and tell us whether the tiling is done. We will give you a budget figure from the dimensions and confirm it at template. We fabricate enclosures in our own shop and install across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and throughout Northern New Jersey, the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley.