Find Your Locally Owned and Operated GCS Glass
Find Your Locally Owned and Operated GCS Glass
Designing a shower space is indeed an exciting project with more choices than ever before. These options can become a bit confusing though. Whether you are a remodeler or a homeowner building your new home from scratch, your priority is to create a place of retreat. Your shower should be a respite from the day, a place where you can recharge and rejuvenate. If you don’t know where to start, don’t worry. We’re here to inspire!
Below, we’ve curated a list of our 13 favorite frameless shower doors.
Whether you have a small hallway bathroom with a shower or a master shower with a large opening, a glass splash panel can be a great way to open the look and feel of your bathroom. Usually, a frameless glass splash panel goes on the same side as your shower head and the other side is left open for you to walk in without a door.
Although splash panels or frameless shower screens look great and are one of the most affordable frameless glass shower options, it can also be the least desirable if this is a shower that you or a loved one plan on using every day.
Why?
Because when we go to take a hot shower and the space isn’t completely enclosed then it can definitely get drafty, especially in the winter months. Also, no frameless shower is watertight, but the splash panel option without a door can let a little more water escape the shower than one with a door.
All in all, it’s a personal preference but they sure do look great!
Love all the textures and colors in this space! The teak bench allows the homeowner to relax as he or she enjoys the soothing, calming environment of their own personal oasis. It’s also a perfect aid for elderly or disabled family members.
The clear, black-bordered splash panels give the room a broad and open feel. The white spherical bathtub, paired with a black faucet and black shower heads makes this bathroom look more coordinated. This is a great way to tie the look of the room together, for a clean and modern black and white theme.
We particularly like this bathroom for its minimalist look. Here, we did a clear glass splash panel with a matte black U-channel to match the cabinet handles. The dark fixtures and the muted colors were a great way to add a bit of dimension to the space. Overall, we like spaces where clutter is kept to a minimum. It’s a crucial element in spaces where the main purpose is to clean yourself up and simply relax.
Something you see more on splash panels than that of a stationary panel with a door is some type of stabilizer bar. They either go from the corner of the glass up to the ceiling or 45-degrees back to the wall. They are not needed in most situations but do provide an extra feeling of safety and support.
Another utilization of glass shower screens would be just that, plural, as in multiple pieces of glass, but still without a door. On a large opening, you will see a frameless glass splash panel on the right and left sides with the middle left open.
The standard width of a frameless glass shower door is 28” wide with standard wall to glass hinges. The smallest we can install a shower door is 22” by fire code. The widest frameless door that can be installed hinged off a wall is 39” but we typically don’t like doing anything wider than 36”.
Typically, the standard height is 80” tall or 6 foot, 8 inches tall. The same height as a standard doorway in any residential or commercial building.
When you just finished tiling your newly remodeled bathroom and shower space, a frameless glass shower door is the cherry on top that truly showcases a beautiful, finished product.
The vast majority of bathrooms in the United States are built to fit the average width bathtub which ranges from 58”– 60” wide. This leaves us with the most common layout for a guest or even the main bathroom in a home.
A frameless swing door with an adjacent inline stationary glass panel becomes the centerpiece of any newly remodeled bathroom.
You have two main options to attach the stationary panel to the tiled curb and wall. Either a shower glass wall to glass clamps/clips or a frameless glass shower u-channel. Both look amazing when installed with the right design.
Simple yet clean combinations can make your bathroom sparkle. Case-in-point: who knew subway tiles, mosaic shelves and floor in gray tones could go such a long way? The neat white and gray palette melded beautifully into an airy look. Complemented by our frameless clear glass swing door and panel with brushed nickel clamps, this walk-in shower is a winner!
For subway and mosaic tiles, Lotus Tile is a Denver-based tile contractor you may want to try.
guess by now you get that we love subway tiles! They are easy to keep clean, look fantastic with any other colors, and most of all, feature a timeless design. You’ll never regret installing them any time soon.
In this shower, there is no such thing as too much white with those subway tiles. In fact, it’s uncomplicated, sleek and clutter-free design coupled with matte black touches is calling me for an ultimate personal escape!
Create a spacious, all-glass look with our frameless swing door and panel with clamps option! The distinctive look in this shower space is achieved by combining different types of shower floors and walls. Here, we’re swooning over the sultry gray porcelain wall tiles contrasting the floor as well as the gorgeous, marble top oak vanity. This bathroom also tells us that a uniquely shaped mirror can add a twist on your bathroom. Hang it in between light fixtures for amazing selfies! Add candles and plants and you got a feast for the eyes! The matching satin brass fixtures and shower door hardware do not hurt either!
Cabinets To Go has a wide selection of customizable vanities that will be the perfect addition to your bathroom.
We see this layout pretty often. A nib wall is a half wall, usually next to the toilet that provides a little extra privacy with a small piece of glass on top of it.
Usually, the adjacent inline glass panel on top of the half wall is flush with the top of the shower door glass. Although, sometimes clients like to take that panel all the way up to the ceiling, keeping the door shorter allows the steam to escape over the door.
One way is not better than the other. Again, it is a personal preference on which aesthetically matches your bathroom design style more.
This shower is neatly an eye candy! The frameless clear glass swing door with nib is complemented by quaint but gorgeous walls. Abbapaper is your #1 go-to if you’re into artisan wallpaper. Add the satin brass finishes and you have a bathroom that’s both functional and attractive.
The gold/satin brass hardware immediately captures the attention! I say this bathroom cop this look if you want a balance between shiny and muted colors. The neutral colored tiles and countertop are just perfect for this look.
At GCS Glass, we call a barn door slider the option when one of the glass panels is a stationary panel and the other panel is a horizontal sliding door. You can position your sliding shower door to open from the right or the left and put the adjacent panel on the opposite side. With frameless sliding glass shower doors, you must be conscious of the width of your curb. The bottom guide for most frameless slider systems is between 3” – 3 ½” wide. Meaning if you have a pan shower with a 2” curb, the guide will be wider than your curb. The shower can still work but it is worth noting for your design.
Sliding shower doors can be the best design option for functionality especially in smaller bathrooms with less room for a swing door to open fully. Caution, due to extra hardware and glass fabrication costs, custom glass sliding showers are more expensive than the same size shower enclosure with a swing style door.
Not only do these shower doors look amazing but they provide the best functionality in our opinion, for a frameless shower glass enclosure.
Why?....
You’ll get a fully frameless look to give your bathroom an open and airy feeling, but the doors also slide past one another in either direction. This makes it easier to clean the bathtub/shower, bathe the kids or animals, but also allows you to crank up the hot water from one side while stepping into the shower from the other side.
The sliding header bar and hardware are available in polished stainless, brushed stainless, matte black, and from some suppliers even satin brass. We offer custom powder coated for some of our exclusive clients but that increases cost and lead times, so keep that in mind.
Some 90-degree corner showers can be large, and it is still more cost-effective to hinge the door from the wall compared to hinging off another piece of glass. We’ll get more into that later.
A lot of your local glass tempering facilities can only temper glass 60” wide, so that might be the maximum width you can get from some local shower door shops.
In the main bathroom suite, we see a lot of frameless 90-degree corner shower enclosures as it really opens an already large spacious bathroom.
Talk to any realtor and they say that kitchens and bathrooms sell homes!
In older homes, you’ve probably noticed they have a lot more walls and hallways dividing up spaces, including bathrooms. You will see a lot more single shower doors, but in newer remodels, you often see contractors knocking down walls and opening the spaces up with glass walls, or just leaving more open space.
While these designs tend to provide less privacy, open floorplans are very trendy these days and tend to offer a more family-like atmosphere that people love.
We mention the sleeve over a 90-degree clamp as we think it looks better. The stationary pieces of glass are attached at the wall and curb and are butted up to one another, then a sleeve over clamp with pressure tighten set screws to hold the two panels together. After that, the installer will silicone the seam together on the inside to create a waterproof seal.
Some companies put a nice 45-degree miter on both panes of glass to meet and make up the 90-degree corner. But does it look better? We don’t think so, and it is a high cost for the glass vendor to get the mitered edge fabricated. I don’t think the price makes your investment any more valuable.
This Instagrammable bathroom is made more stylish with consistent black and white features. Here, the designer used an intriguing pair of fine black framed mirrors and an unusually shaped sink. The floor is definitely a visual interest. All the fixtures are kept in chrome, while the clear glass shower door reinforces the bathroom’s sophisticated look.
Double glass swing doors are such a visual statement to any newly remodeled bathroom, whether that be your guest bath or your master suite.
The thing to keep in mind here is that you must have enough space on the outside of the shower for both doors to be able to open fully. If the toilet or vanity is right next to the shower, then this style probably won’t be the best for functionality in your space.
If your shower is open in front and you are looking for an affordable show-stopping shower that you would love to show off to your neighbors or post on your Pinterest account, the frameless double glass french doors could be the ideal choice for you.
I think the biggest question with this design would be what type of handles are you going to showcase in the center?
We have 5 main handle options that you can get from the biggest hardware suppliers in the country like CRL, FHC, and HMI, but there are 100’s to choose from. When it comes to shower hardware you just want to make sure it is in stock if you’re getting into specialty finish colors and styles.
What is a neo-angle? According to Homeguides – A neo-angle shower features a space-saving design that consists of three angled glass panels — one being the shower door — placed between two corner walls. This design takes up less space, versus a traditional square or rectangular-shaped shower, while still offering individuals adequate room in the shower area.
Unlike the previous showers we’ve discussed, the neo-angle shower door is usually in the middle of two panels and not hinged off a wall.
We can do this 1 of 2 ways. Either we add an aluminum header bar that is the same finish color as the rest of the shower hardware, or we do heavy-duty wall to glass clamps with glass-to-glass hinges for the frameless glass door.
Both options look great but in order to put the door between two panels of glass, we must make it more rigid, or the door will be unsafe to function appropriately.
With most neo-angle showers, you will almost always miter at least 2 long edges of the glass to make the glass have a better reveal between the panels where they meet up at the 135-degree angles.
This style has become a lot more popular as the rise of the “wet room” has started to become a design trend with a lot of interior designers and design-build firms.
This is not just a frameless glass shower enclosure but involves putting a stand-alone tub and shower into one entire area of the bathroom and closing it off with a wall of glass. You can still hinge the door off the wall to get the same style of wet room but something about putting the door in the center really makes a statement.
Things to keep in mind when designing your wet room:
Again, the hardware was engineered to hinge an 80lb.+ frameless glass shower door from another piece of glass that is designed to be hinged off a maximum width panel of 22”. This means, if you’re looking for a completely frameless look with nothing above the door, you might not be able to put the door directly in the center if you have an extra-wide opening. Don’t worry we have solutions for that.
The most common solution for an extra-wide opening with a door hinged in the center would be to add an aluminum header bar. Again, this header bar comes in the same hardware finish color as the rest of the shower but provides more rigid support for the door to swing securely in the center.
Another option would be what we call a ghost header. This is in essence just a non-operable transom piece of glass that connects the two side panels above the door acting like a stiffener to provide just the right amount of support for the door to function perfectly.
Clamps or channels? What’s your preference? You can’t go wrong with one or the other. This layout is often chosen because a homeowner and their bathroom remodeling contractor have decided to add a bench in the shower, so the homeowner will have a place to sit and shave while enjoying a hot shower.
The swing door is positioned on the opposite side of the shower and the stationary adjacent glass panel has a custom notch cut into it so it precisely fits around the bench and is secured to the curb and wall tile.
If your bench has an overhanging lip, the majority of the time the installer will notch out the same thickness as the glass for the panel to slide into to give it a very clean finished look.
Some manufacturers will try to CNC cut the glass to fit around the overhang but from our experience, it looks better to notch the overhang and saves you in extra costs.
You will see this shower style as a standalone shower but most of the time you see it as a free-standing shower next to a bathtub. The notched panel usually fits up onto the tub deck of the bathtub next to it, or if it is a standalone bathtub, the 90-degree shower has a half wall as a return wall, with glass making up the top half of the wall. This provides a little more privacy between the tub and shower.
This is a very common layout in the main bathroom of most homes we work in. Just because the layout is common does not mean your style has to be! Dress it up with a custom shower door handle and upgrade your glass to Starphire ultra-clear low iron glass to really show off the newly remodeled tile work you just spent all that money on!
What we mean by super custom is that you are not going to be able to even slightly compare these to some stock shower door sitting on a shelf at Lowes or Home Depot. These are not only custom in layout and design, but the hardware is custom-made to make the homeowner’s shower dreams come to life.
Let’s be upfront about this style option. Super custom doors will cost more of your hard-earned money, but the end results are definitely worth every penny.
When you are designing a super custom bathroom, cost can’t be at the top of your priority list.
We’ve done openings as wide as 10’ with a stationary panel in the middle and two doors that close to the opening on the far left and right of the shower, as well as panels on the far right and left with a door that slides both ways and covers up the opening in the middle of the shower.
If you can dream it, and our glass designers deem it safe, we can supply and install it!
Almost any of the above layouts can become a steam shower except for the frameless sliding door options.
A frameless sliding shower door has a projection of about 2” (depending on slider style) between the door and the other panels. Again, they have polycarbonate translucent plastics to fill these gaps but they’re not used to create a perfect seal. Instead, they’re more for helping keep water from splashing through the gaps.
With “Frameless” glass you are always going to have gaps around the perimeter of the doors even with swing style doors. You can choose to add plastics and other seals but most of the time when you’re spending that much money on a new custom shower, you don’t want to tarnish the finished look that way.
From our experience, with the power of the steam units these days and with minimal gaps around the door, homeowners don’t even notice a loss of steam.
Now comes the choice of whether or not to add an operable transom or to do a full height door.
An “operable” transom glass is the panel of glass that usually goes above the door and has the ability to tilt to vent out the steam of the shower. I say “usually” goes above the door because here at GCS Glass we always look for cool custom ways to do things and have done quite a few vertical transoms.
Why, you, ask?
Because not many people can reach above a 7’ door to tilt the vent so it becomes more for looks than functionality.
Pretty cool, right?
Then again, when you’re taking a steam shower or sitting in it as a sauna, the main point is to keep the steam in until you’re done.
In that case we always recommend going with a full height door with top and bottom pivot style hinges. This option means less reveals (gaps) than the transom option and then you can just keep the door cracked after you’re done to let the steam out.
Sometimes a full height door is not possible depending on the layout, and in that case, you can still go for a transom and make it “non-operable” so that you can do a custom smaller door, or have the ability to position the door where you might not be able to with a full height door.
At the end of the day, it’s what makes the most sense in your bathroom layout and makes you the happiest.
Every shower layout listed above can be custom grid wrapped.
Some say that the grid showers are a fad but from our experience that fad only seems to be growing. We have had homeowners from around the country contacting us because they can’t seem to find local companies that are producing quality finished grid showers.
As of this writing, we have not only perfected the matte black custom grid wrapped shower glass enclosures, but we have done them in numerous custom finishes.
From white, polished chrome, antique brass, and brushed bronze. Custom home builders, interior designers, architects, and homeowners alike are pushing the envelope with design and custom finishes. We feel that it’s our responsibility to keep up!
In the beginning of the trend it was steel wrapped grid showers that were all the rage, but in addition to them being quite the investment, you can’t powder coat the inside of the steel tubing. No matter how hard you try to seal every hole, water always finds the path of least resistance and they would begin to leak out rust.
We played the game, and learned the hard way. Nobody wants rust stains on their newly remodeled white tile, whether it’s imported from Italy, or just from the neighborhood Home Depot.
So, then the industry started to get creative, as did we, by wrapping the perimeter of the shower glass with the same aluminum u-channel that is made for our frameless shower glass enclosures.
For the grids, adding an aluminum flat stock to the inside and outside of glass.
There are a couple of issues with this. First, it was a nightmare for homeowners to keep the grids on the inside of the shower clean. Because cleaning the inside of the shower glass was such a challenge, we would often hear how some companies had to go out and reapply the interior grids. The other issue was the adhesive used to apply the grid material to the glass. Unfortunately, you could see whatever the adhesive was from the opposite side of the glass. Squiggly lines of silicone became industry standard for some, “NOT GCS Glass”, as did different types of tapes that would leave air bubbles.
We apply the grids only to the outside surface of the glass and use proprietary high bond adhesive tape. When applied to the glass appropriately, the tape does not leave any air bubbles and is the same thickness after being installed as the flat stock aluminum grid material. This leaves the inside of the shower grids looking as good as the outside of the shower. One solid surface of glass makes it easier to clean and maintain for years to come.
Some companies put a nice 45-degree miter on both panes of glass to meet and make up the 90-degree corner. But does it look better? We don’t think so, and it is a high cost for the glass vendor to get the mitered edge fabricated. I don’t think the price makes your investment any more valuable.
The clear, black-bordered splash panels give the room a broad and open feel. The white spherical bathtub, paired with a black faucet and black shower heads makes this bathroom look more coordinated. This is a great way to tie the look of the room together, for a clean and modern black and white theme.
Our company was built on the idea that customers deserve a quality product that is individualized to fit their style and needs.
If you want to start designing your custom shower project with our expert click the button below to get started!
We pride ourselves in having fast and professional staff that are always ready to help you with your next project.
Find Your Locally Owned and Operated GCS Glass