Choose A Door For Your New Glass Shower
Glass shower screens create a feeling of spaciousness and light in a bathroom, allowing for an unimpeded view in all directions. When selecting an overall design, you'll need to pick a door style. Here are several options.
Sliding Shower Doors
For smaller bathrooms that don't comfortably accommodate an outward swinging door, sliding doors are ideal. The panels on these styles run along tracks, allowing you to push them to one side; sliding doors suit both stand-alone showers as well as shower-tub combinations.
Hinged Doors
Like standard doors that often feature throughout a home in bedrooms and other places, hinged doors swing outwards. These models—that either attach to the wall or to a stationary glass panel—are ideal for medium or small showers. The downside is that their opening movement can impede others using the area. However, whether this is an issue depends on the layout and size of the overall bathroom.
Pivot Doors
For spacious shower enclosures, a pivot door might be appropriate. These doors swing either inwards or outwards, and this versatility provides options if your bathroom has a peak hour where several people use it simultaneously. Some models secure the pivoting action at the top and bottom so the door can revolve in a circular motion.
Bath-Shower Combo Door
Your shower might overhang a tub, combining the two components, which makes the most of space while increasing functionality in a small bathroom. A bath screen shower door, consisting of one fixed panel with another swinging one, is one option for these installations, allowing for ease of entry and exit. Another possibility is to install fixed panels only.
Doorless Showers
A door is not mandatory on all showers—you can use a walk-in glass shower. For this design you could place the bathing space in the room corner, making use of two tiled walls, and forming the third wall with a glass panel. Alternatively, the shower might consist of a tile back wall, with glass on two sides. A crucial factor in these designs is the floor shape, which needs to draw water towards the drain, preventing it from flowing across the entire bathroom.
Which door style is most practical depends on the room and shower size and the number of people that will use it simultaneously. Sliding doors are a space-saver, while outward swinging styles work in bathrooms with enough room. Inwardly swinging pivot doors are more feasible in larger enclosures. For a supremely minimalist approach, though, you might opt to leave out the door altogether.