Expanding Your Business By Calling The Builders

Two options, when installing a glass shower, are framed and frameless designs. Consider the following aspects of these styles to help you install the best enclosure for your bathroom.

Appearance

You'll need to think about the visual effect of whatever shower you install. Frameless showers evoke a luxurious, minimalist feel, consisting of sheer glass panels without heavy metal framing. The clear panels highlight the colours and textures of the shower tiling, whether stone, ceramic or something else. With its sleek look, a frameless shower creates a modern spa-like feel.

Framed showers, however, tend to flatter traditional or vintage bathrooms. While the clear glass panels open up the bathroom, they sit within noticeable metal frames that draw attention away from other design elements. For example, they don't offer such a clear view of beautiful ivory travertine tiling because the frames get in the way. However, the edges can make a statement in themselves. For example, black matte framing can evoke a unique vintage look. In any case, no matter which structure you install, glass panels reflect light around a bathroom so that it feels more airy and open.

Door Mechanism

One practical factor you'll need to factor in your decisions regards the shower door. To save space in a cramped bathroom, you could install a sliding door, which doesn't swing outwards to potentially hinder the path of others in the bathroom. For a sliding door, you'll need a framed shower that has tracks along the bottom. A framed shower can also support a swinging door, as well as a sliding one.

With a frameless shower design, you can connect swinging doors that turn on a hinge at one side, or else a pivot door that can revolve inwards or outwards. Remember to factor in space for the swinging action when designing the bathroom layout. 

Cleaning

Unfortunately, cleaning is part of life and that includes the shower. Does either style make cleaning easier? Though glass shower screens overall are easy to wash, metal framing forms crevices and grooves that can gather soap scum and dirt. The channels of sliding doors, in particular, can hold water to encourage mould and mildew. Thus, framed showers require more cleaning around the hardware edges and tracks. As frameless models consist of clear panels with smaller hinges and brackets, they don't offer so many hiding places for dirt buildup.

Budget

Typically, a framed shower is more economical than a frameless shower that requires thicker toughened glass to support itself without the help of much framing. Not only is thicker glass more expensive, but it's heavier and thus, trickier to install and seal.

To learn more about glass shower screens, reach out to a local glass contractor.