High-End Glass Showers

Complex Projects? We Deliver.

Framed vs Frameless
Shower Screens,
Doors & Enclosures

Two ways to build the same shower. Which one suits you is decided less by taste than by your walls, your tiles and the glass you want in it.

A pair of arched shower doors in a slim black bronze frame, standing part-open in a grey marble bathroom, the frame bent to the arch and the flat glass cut to follow it, the profile no thicker than a fingerA frameless shower enclosure seen dead square-on in an all-white bathroom with sage green walls, the glass so clear it barely registers, and six small polished brass brackets and hinges standing out against it like rectangles hanging in the airA polished nickel framed shower door running full height in a Carrara marble bathroom, with a glazed panel above it, the mirror-bright frame unbroken around every edge and the glass carrying a soft sandblasted panel and border that echoes the marble behind itA single frameless walk-in shower panel running floor to ceiling, recessed into both the wall and the ceiling so not one bracket, channel or clamp is visible anywhere on itA pair of arched shower doors in a slim black bronze frame, standing part-open in a grey marble bathroom, the frame bent to the arch and the flat glass cut to follow it, the profile no thicker than a finger
Framed — Bent to an Arch
Framed — 30 mm Lines
Frameless — Floating Hardware
Semi-Frameless — U-Channels
Arched & Curved Frames

We make both, in our own workshop, to your measurements — so this is not an argument for one of them. It is the questions we would ask you at a survey. A frameless shower screen forgives a wall that is not quite straight and disappears into the room. A frame carries textured, fluted and laminated glass that frameless hardware cannot, and hides every fixing behind cover plates trimmed on site. Both are bespoke shower enclosures, surveyed, made and installed by us UK-wide.

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A continuous line, or glass and nothing else

Stand back from a finished shower and the difference is one thing: whether you are looking at a line or at the glass. A framed shower draws an unbroken metal edge around every panel — the same 30 mm width everywhere, hinges and handle carried on the frame, so nothing interrupts the glass. A frameless one has no line at all, and instead a few pieces of hardware reading as rectangles in mid-air. Which is to say each route hides one thing and shows another: framed hides its fixings and shows you a line; frameless hides the line and shows you its fixings. Neither is the better answer in the abstract.

A bronze framed shower enclosure seen square-on from across a marble bathroom — a slim dark bronze line running unbroken around the whole perimeter and up the single centre post, with book-matched Calacatta behind the glass and a bronze rain head and valve inside

Framed

  • Hinges sit on the frame, and usually the handle too, so the glass itself has no break in it
  • Every line reads the same 30 mm width when the door is closed — a designed dimension, not a coincidence
  • The metal becomes part of the design rather than something to be minimised
A frameless inline shower enclosure seen from across a marble bathroom — no frame anywhere, only polished glass edges meeting the wall, and two square copper hinge blocks on the door edge reading as metal rectangles in mid-air against copper shower fittings and a dramatically figured stone back wall

Frameless

  • No perimeter at all — polished glass edges and a 2–3 mm sealed joint against the wall
  • The hinges read as blocks: pure transparent glass, and metal rectangles in the air
  • The room shows through, so a small bathroom keeps its depth instead of ending at a frame

So what actually counts as a frameless shower screen?

Worth settling early, because the words are used loosely everywhere including by us on the phone. The short version: the door decides what it is called, and the fixed panels decide how much metal you see. They are two separate choices, and mixing them up is why people end up asking for a frameless shower screen with a frame on the wall — which is a perfectly sensible thing to want, and has a name.

The door

The door decides

A framed door has a perimeter profile all the way round, and the hinges are mounted on that profile. A frameless door has none at all — the hinges grip the glass itself. There is no middle position here and no judgement call: either there is a frame around the door or there is not. Everything else follows from which of the two you have, including what glass it can carry.

The fixed panels

Four ways to hold it

A fixed shower screen has no hinges, so it can be held four ways. A frame on every edge, like a door. Wall brackets — small square plates, so every glass edge reads as open. Recessed into a groove in the tiled wall, showing no metal at all, planned with your tiler before tiling starts. Or U-channels: slim profiles at wall, floor and sometimes ceiling, projecting about 20 mm.

Semi-frameless

A frame on the wall

U-channels are what most people mean by that, and the trade calls the result semi-frameless. Picture an inline enclosure — fixed panel, door, fixed panel — with channels along the top, sides and bottom of the fixed panels. The door is genuinely frameless, but most of the visible edges now carry a slim profile, so it reads as framed from across the room.

Not a proper frame

Still frameless

A U-channel is not a frame in any structural sense: 2 mm walls, flexible, there to hold the glass against the wall, floor or ceiling rather than to carry it. Our frames are 25 mm deep and carbon-fibre reinforced. So even a single fixed panel channelled on all four edges is still frameless — though we will say semi-frameless, because pretending you will see no metal would be misleading.

What a frame buys you

Most of what a frame does, it does by hiding things. Three of them disappear the day it is fitted. The fourth shows up years later.

A close view from inside a shower where the light bronze frame meets the marble floor and wall — the profile sits flat on the stone in one fine line, with no bolt head anywhere and no bead of sealant standing proud, and the bronze mesh interlayer just readable in the glass
Nothing at the wall

Every bolt sits inside the frame under a cover plate we trim to size on site. The mastic goes into grooves machined in the frame, so on a flat wall the frame simply sits on the surface and nothing shows — no bolt heads, no sealant line.

The handle side of a closed framed shower door seen close — the door stile and the frame post meeting as two pieces of light bronze with only a hairline between them, a square bronze bar handle on the stile, and no rubber seal in sight
Seals in the frame

The handle-side profile is shaped to hold the door seal inside it. Close the glass shower door and there is no seal to see, only metal. Frameless door seals are as slim as they can be made, but they sit on the glass edge, and you see them.

A slim cylindrical hinge mounted on the light bronze frame of a shower door, finished to exactly the same tone as the profile it sits on, so it reads as a thickening of the frame line rather than a block clamped to the glass
Hinges on the frame

Frameless hinges clamp the glass, so they sit on the glass — two metal blocks you look at through the panel. Framed hinges mount on the frame itself, in the same finish, and read as part of the line rather than as objects in the glass.

A bronze framed shower door with a fixed window either side, built into a tiled and marble-lined wall inside the bathroom, brass shower fittings behind the glass and a pebble mosaic floor
Made to last

A frameless door hangs off two hinges gripping glass. Over the years it can shift or drop, the seals can wear sooner, the mastic may need redoing. A framed door hangs on a frame built to carry it, and made properly it stays exactly where it was put.

Flat walls, or a frameless shower screen

Most people who contact us are mid-refurbishment and have already chosen a route. So read this less as a test of the wall you have than as a brief for the one your tiler is about to build. A framed shower screen needs it flat. A frameless one can forgive it.

A dark bronze grid shower enclosure running the full height of the room — a single corner post carrying both glazed sides, every vertical unbroken from floor to ceiling, with Carrara marble and chrome fittings inside
Framed — dead straight

If you want framed, brief the tiler now. A frame is a straight line in a dark finish, and it shows every millimetre the wall is out. Flat walls are the first job, not a detail — tell whoever is tiling, or laying the stone or micro cement, before they start. A frame bent to follow a bowed wall never looks intended, so we advise against it.

Micro cement and Tadelakt are the usual culprits. Beautiful, and often 5–10 mm out across a wall. With a frame, that leaves us two poor options. We follow the wall, and the frame is no longer straight. Or we install straight and fill the gap with mastic. Want one of these finishes with a frame? It has to go on flat — say so before work starts. Already done and bowed? A frameless shower screen can follow it — we cut the edge in two or three straight runs — so 10 mm is almost invisible. A door cannot.

Rough tile favours framed. A frameless door seals against the wall with a soft seal, and rough mosaic leaves gaps it cannot fill. So we put a fixed panel on each rough wall, mastic-sealed to the tile, and the door then hangs and seals glass to glass, where both work well. A framed door has no such problem: its slim 14 mm frame fixes to the rough surface with minimal mastic, and the door seals frame to frame.

A small frameless shower under the eaves of an old house — the glass cut to follow the slope of an exposed oak roof beam and notched at the low corner to clear a wall fitting, held on small black brackets against white metro tile
Frameless — follows the room

What glass can each one carry?

If you already know the glass you want, this may settle it. A frameless door needs one flat, solid sheet for its hinges to grip. A framed door has no such limit — which is why almost everything interesting in glass lives on the framed side.

A framed shower door in kiln-formed glass — a bubbled texture melted into the sheet rather than rolled, carried on all four edges by a slim polished nickel frame, set into a green marble opening beside a bath
Framed — Kiln-Formed

A framed door carries any glass type: fluted and reeded, frosted, tinted, kiln-formed textures like the one here, and laminated glass with something sealed inside it — a coloured interlayer, mesh, textile, or a sheet of metal cut to a pattern on our CNC. For the textured side, see our fluted and reeded shower glass.

And things that are not really glass at all. A laminate is two panes bonded around an interlayer, so anything flat can go between them: mesh, textile, or metal a millimetre thick, cut to a pattern on our CNC and plated to suit the room. Any pattern we can draw, we can cut and laminate.

Two frameless shower doors in Ultra Clear glass, sandblasted in a gradient from solid frosting at the middle to clear at the top and bottom — the shower door standing open and the WC door closed, both hung on brass hinges clamped directly to the glass beneath a slim brass stabiliser bar
Frameless — Sandblasted Gradient

A frameless door is one clean sheet — though a sheet can still be worked. These two are Ultra Clear, sandblasted in a gradient from solid at the middle to clear at top and bottom. What it cannot be is ribbed or laminated: the hinges clamp a flat face, and an open edge would expose an interlayer. A fixed screen rests rather than hangs, so fluted and reeded are fine there.

How safe is the glass?

I have worked with glass for nearly thirty years, and I still have a small scar on my lip from the second of them. Carrying a panel with a colleague, we clipped the metal bead on a plasterboard corner — barely touched it — and the panel went. My glasses saved my eyes. Every panel we fit is toughened safety glass and it does its job, but the claim stops a sentence short.

A framed shower door after the glass was broken — the whole laminated panel shattered into fine crazing yet still standing square in its slim black frame, with not a piece on the marble floor, in a loft bathroom with a freestanding bath beyond
SHATTERED, STILL IN PLACE

The edge is the weak point

Breaking a toughened panel in the middle takes many times the blow it takes at a corner — which is exactly where it is struck when it has to be broken. And it does not crack, it goes at once: a panel 800 by 2400 mm is roughly 50 kg of small sharp cubes, thrown sideways.

A frame covers the edges

It works with ordinary single-sheet glass, no laminate needed. Edges inside a frame cannot be struck, so the same 8 mm panel is far harder to break framed than frameless. And if it does go, the frame takes the pressure rather than the room.

And if safety comes first, laminated

Two 4 mm panes bonded around a clear EVA interlayer — EVA rather than the usual PVB, because it stands up to water far better. The door here is one of ours: it was broken, and it shattered without going anywhere. Break one pane and the other holds; break both and the interlayer holds the pieces.

Will the metal match?

Choose your taps and controls first, then read this. A shower is a dozen pieces of metal, and whether they can all be made to agree — with each other, and with the fittings you already own — is a real difference between the two routes.

A polished nickel framed enclosure with twin doors and a glazed panel above, the frame running as one unbroken mirror-bright line around every edge — and on the wall beside it a polished nickel towel radiator from another maker entirely, in the same finish
Framed

One material, one batch

A framed shower is aluminium, and every part is finished together, so it all matches exactly. We make bespoke handles, and we fit other suppliers' handles where you have already chosen one — nickel sits happily beside almost anything. For mirror nickel, we plate the frames ourselves.

A large frameless walk-in shower in dark bronze hardware — the door hinges, the wall brackets and the handle all read slightly darker than the warmer brass shower heads above them, which is what happens when the parts come from different makers
Frameless

As close as the metals allow

Frameless hardware comes from several makers in brass, zinc or stainless, so it is plated or PVD-coated, while the channels are anodised aluminium. Those finishes never look identical: what you get is the best match we could achieve. Stainless channels can be PVD-coated to close the gap, at a cost.

A frameless corner shower in a period bathroom finished throughout in unlacquered brass — the hinges, handle, ceiling arm, rain head and valves all left uncoated so they patina in step with the brass taps and towel rail elsewhere in the room
Real brass

For taps that will age

Uncoated brass taps and shower heads build a patina, and anodised metal in a brass tone cannot follow them — it stays as it left us. Solid brass does follow, framed or frameless: a brass frame, or brass hinges, handle and channels. It costs more, and we can age it to your sample before delivery.

The question to ask yourself: are your taps and controls uncoated brass? If they are, solid brass ages with them either way — a brass frame, or frameless hardware. See our brass framed shower screens.

Arches and curves — both routes

We bend our own profiles, so an arched head is available on either route: framed, where the profile follows the curve, or frameless, where the glass itself is cut to it. Worth separating this from the wall question above, because the two sound similar and are not. An arch is a designed curve, drawn to a radius and made to it — repeatable, and accurate to a millimetre. A wall that bows is an unpredictable defect of five or ten millimetres that nothing can follow accurately. We are glad to make the first and we will talk you out of chasing the second.

A pair of arched shower doors in a dark bronze frame — each door carries half of the arch and together they form one continuous curve, set in a full-height screen that divides a marble shower from the WC beside it, with fixed glass filling the corners above
Framed arch

Framed — the profile is bent to the radius

The frame is made to the curve in the workshop rather than assembled from straight lengths and hoped for. That gives an arched head with the same continuous line as any other framed piece, and it lets an arch carry textured or laminated glass, which the frameless route cannot do on a door. It also means the arch is a manufactured part: we need the radius settled at survey, because it is cut and formed before anything comes to site.

Arched fluted glass shower screen — a single fixed panel of vertically reeded glass with its top edge cut to a broad curve, held in slim copper U-channels at the floor and side, against deep navy stacked tile with a copper towel radiator alongside
Frameless arch

Frameless — the glass is cut to the curve

No profile at all: the top edge of the sheet is cut to the arch and polished, and the panel is held at the sides and foot. On a fixed screen this is the purer result — a curve with nothing drawn around it. Worth being clear that an arched panel is not curved glass; it is a flat sheet with a curve cut into the top edge, which is what almost everyone picturing an arch actually wants. Genuinely bent and toughened glass is a different piece of work and we would quote it separately.

Framed vs frameless at a glance

Everything above and below, in one place. Read across a row — most decisions come down to two or three of them, and which two or three depends entirely on your bathroom rather than on your taste.

A bowed wall — fixed screenFrameless Forgiving. We cut the glass edge in two or three straight runs angled to follow the wall, so a 10 mm bow is barely noticeable. A true curve can be CNC-cut — harder, and dearer. Framed Needs the wall as flat as possible — a frame is a straight line and shows every millimetre. Wall preparation is the first job, not a detail for later.
A bowed wall — the doorFrameless The hinges take up 2–5 mm of curve — two hinges rather than three, and a door that is not heavy. Beyond that, a fixed panel goes on the wall and the door hangs off the glass. Framed The hinge-side profile cannot be bent — the hinges would stop aligning. Slightly off plumb is fine; curved is not.
Rough or textured tileFrameless A soft seal cannot fill deep grooves, so water escapes. The fix is a fixed panel sealed to the surface, with the door hung off the glass. Framed Straightforward. The frame goes on first as a 14 mm profile and is sealed to the texture like a glass edge.
How fixed panels are heldFrameless Four ways: wall brackets, recessed into the tiled wall, U-channels, or a mix. Channelled panels are what the trade calls semi-frameless — the door is still frameless. Framed Every edge of every panel carries a frame — fixed panels and doors alike. No glass edge is left bare.
Visible fixingsFrameless Bolt heads visible inside the shower on about 90% of installs — flush and finish-matched, but present. The premium hardware range comes with cover plates that hide them. Framed None. Every bolt sits behind a cover plate, and grooves under the frames hide the mastic.
Door sealsFrameless Minimalist 8 mm PVC seals on the glass edge — as slim as they can be made, but visible. Framed Every seal sits inside the frame, away from the eye. Close the door and you see only metal.
Finish matchFrameless Hardware from several suppliers in brass, zinc or stainless, each finished by the technique its material allows — the best match we could achieve. Framed Exact. All aluminium, all finished in the same batch. Bespoke handles, and other suppliers’ items fitted where wanted.
Glass it can carryFrameless Any single smooth sheet — clear, Ultra Clear, tinted or frosted — in 10 mm toughened. Ribbed glass only on a fixed screen, never on a door. Framed Everything: fluted and reeded, frosted, laminated, and decorative panels with mesh, textile or CNC-cut metal sealed inside.
Grid designsFrameless Not available. Framed Framed only. Grid bars can go on both faces of the glass; we advise the outside face alone, so a squeegee has a clear run inside.
Sight lineFrameless No lines, apart from any U-channels sitting on the walls or floor. The hardware reads as separate rectangles against otherwise uninterrupted glass. Framed A 30 mm line wherever the glass has an edge — fixed panels and closed doors alike. The metal is part of the design.
FrameFrameless None. Polished glass edges, discrete brackets, hinges and U-channels. Framed 25 mm deep aluminium with carbon fibre in the cavities — rigid, light, rust-free. Real brass to the same or custom sizes where the frame should patina.
ThresholdFrameless A rounded acrylic threshold on the floor, barely visible because it takes the colour of the floor. Framed A low threshold under the door, resolving into the same 30 mm as everything else.
Door swingFrameless Both ways, 90° each side, spring-loaded — or one way with the L-shaped seal. On bifold hinges, 180° one way. Framed One way, a full 180°, held shut by neodymium magnets recessed into the frame. Limited to 900 mm wide.
PriceFrameless The more affordable route at bespoke level. Framed Usually two to three times the price of frameless — mostly labour, with bespoke anodising or plating a significant second. Real brass again two to three times an anodised frame.

Both routes are made to your measurements in our own workshop, and both include survey, design and installation.

Framed and frameless in real bathrooms

Both routes, across screens, doors and enclosures. Every picture is a Caledora installation — surveyed, designed, made in our workshop and fitted by our own team.

How framed and frameless shower enclosures are built

Everything above is what the two routes do in a bathroom. This is what they are. A framed shower enclosure and a frameless one are not two ways of holding a piece of glass. Both are measured to the millimetre before anything is made. After that they part company completely: different products, made in different places, by very different amounts of work.

On one, the glass is the product. On the other, the frame.

A frameless shower is a planned glass wall: the splits, the gaps, the holes and the notches are all designed into the glass, and the metal exists only to hold it. A framed shower is the reverse — the frame is the thing you are buying, and the glass is cut afterwards to follow its lines.

A white framed shower enclosure built like a piece of joinery — a solid panelled base to the door, reeded glass in a grid above it, a transom light across the top and a green marble cap running round the whole structure, so the frame reads as the thing that was made and the glass only fills it
Frame first, glass after

01 · Frameless — planned into the glass

Where the panels split, where they meet the walls, the holes for brackets and handle, the notches for hinges, the edge shaped to your wall — all drawn into the glass before anything is cut. The splits are placed to suit the seals, not the other way round.

02 · Frameless — then simply fitted

The glass arrives made to your walls. If it is right, the work is to assemble, install and seal it — almost all the skill has already happened in the measuring. A screen might be three hours, a typical enclosure around five. Some take two days: the fixed panels first, then back once the silicone has set to hang the door.

03 · Framed — the frame is what you buy

Here the frame leads and the glass follows, cut to the lines it sets. It is the frames people judge: alignment, quality, how they work. The door frame carries the glass and hides the gaskets; the perimeter frame hides the bolts and the joints to the wall. And because the frame carries whatever goes in it, the glass can be anything.

04 · Framed — built around the door, in your bathroom

The frames are profiles, not welded, and only the door is finished with us. The shower enclosure is built around it in the room: profiles to the walls, panels positioned, everything aligned, the door tested, then sealed and the cover plates cut and fitted both faces — usually cut outside, as few clients want cutting indoors. Fourteen hours, against a typical five.

Seals, thresholds and keeping the water in

Framed contains water better, because the hinges sit on the frame rather than through the glass — so the seal is never interrupted at the hinges, where a frameless one has to be. Frameless answers with a seal you can barely see. We have made our own for seven years and still change them, batch by batch.

Frameless — the vertical seals

Three shapes, all our own: 8 mm, 10 mm, or a small L-shaped one. The 8 and 10 let the door swing both ways; the L-shaped restricts it to one, which is also why a bifold seals better. We stopped fitting clip-ons years ago — far wider, they collect soap and yellow within six months.

Frameless — under the door

Two 10 mm parts working as a pair. A rounded 10 × 10 mm threshold glued to the floor under the door — the barrier, and not optional on either route. Then a 10 mm PVC seal on the door's bottom edge, with a 45° deflector throwing water back in and soft lips meeting the threshold. The gap under the glass is 20 mm: ten and ten.

Framed — the seal you never see

Sponge seals sit recessed inside the profile, invisible with the door closed. The hinges are on the frame, not through the glass, so nothing interrupts the seal. Far better sealed than frameless — though no door is absolute: where the vertical and horizontal seals meet there is always a small gap.

30

Framed — why it is all 30 mm

Not a house style — it is what the parts add up to. Hinge side: 14 mm wall profile + 14 mm door frame + 2 mm gap = 30. Under the door: a 7 mm threshold shaped to steer water inwards + 20 mm door profile + 3 mm gap = 30. And every frame — door, fixed panels, all of it — is 25 mm thick, so from above it reads as one line.

Why a frameless shower door needs plain glass

Higher up the page we said a textured or laminated door will be framed. This is why. Two reasons, and either would be enough on its own — worth knowing, because neither is a house rule we could bend if you asked. Both come down to what a frameless hinge physically has to do.

A door hangs. A screen rests.

A frameless door hangs. Two hinges carry all of it, and there is a gap underneath. A fixed screen does not hang — it stands on the floor, a bath or a half-wall, so the fixtures only steady it. That is why textured glass is fine in a frameless screen and wrong in a frameless door.

Laminated metal pattern in a shower door — a diamond and border design cut from nickel-plated sheet and sealed between two panes of glass, set in a mirror nickel-plated frame, with onyx walls and antique mirror inside the enclosure
Laminated — CNC-cut sheet

A hinge cannot clamp it

A frameless hinge works by clamping — a rubber gasket pressed flat against each face of the glass, holding the whole weight of the door. Ribbed glass gives it almost nothing to press on, only the tips of the ribs. Laminated glass is two thin panes rather than one solid sheet. Neither is something to hang a door from.

And water reaches the interlayer

A frameless edge is an open edge. Cleaning chemicals and water attack the interlayer of a laminate, and an unprotected one in a shower can start to delaminate within a few years. A frame bonded to all four edges prevents it — which is why laminated glass is framed wherever it goes, door or not.

What framed and frameless shower enclosures cost

Expect the opposite of what the high street teaches. There, framed is the budget option, and for a good reason: a mass-market frame is a chunky profile that absorbs about 20 mm of error at each side, so one product fits any opening from 800 to 840 mm. The profile carries the glass too, so it can drop to 4 or 6 mm and the wall need not be plumb. Cheaper material, less precision, simpler production. Bespoke inverts all of it — a framed shower enclosure lands at two to three times the frameless price.

Frameless

The skill is in the measuring

Glass, a few brackets, a pair of hinges. Cutting, polishing and toughening it is straightforward. What you pay for is the survey, the design and the install — quick work, when the drawing is right. There is no adjustment afterwards, so the measuring must be exact, but the making is short.

Framed

All of that, plus a frame

Everything the frameless route needs, and then a frame: extrusions cut and assembled, carbon fibre fitted, every part anodised or plated. Days in the workshop, then more hours in your bathroom. And ours are slim by design — 14 × 25 mm around a door, 30 × 25 mm on the fixed panels — which is far harder than making them chunky.

Upgrades

Where it moves again

Real brass instead of aluminium: heavier, far dearer by the kilo, and a great deal more CNC work — two to three times an anodised frame again. Then the glass, where textured, laminated and decorative all sit above clear. And bespoke finishes, where PVD carries a minimum charge per batch.

Which one is right for your bathroom?

Six situations that come up at almost every survey, and what we would actually say to you about each. Budget aside — that decides plenty on its own — this is what the bathroom itself is telling you.

Your walls are not straight

Frameless. A fixed screen can follow a bowed wall — the glass edge cut in two or three straight runs — so 10 mm barely shows. A frame is a straight line beside a crooked one, and the gap between them is the first thing you see.

A loft, a bench, or an odd shape

Frameless, usually. Sloping ceilings, benches, half-walls, corners that are not square — the glass is just cut to the room. A frame chasing the same shape gets chunky and heavy. We build framed lofts often, but framed looks best on long straight lines.

Rough mosaic or textured tile

Framed. A soft door seal cannot fill deep grooves and water escapes through them. A framed door's profile goes on first and seals to the texture. Frameless is still possible, but it needs a fixed panel at that wall first.

You want fluted or reeded glass

Framed, for anything with a door. A fixed screen with no door can be frameless, and often is. Anything laminated — reeded, coloured interlayers, mesh, CNC-cut metal — is framed wherever it goes.

You want the grid look

Framed, and only framed. The ends of the grid bars have to be sealed, and the perimeter frame is what seals them — a frameless door has no perimeter to close them into. Nearly every grid we build is black: see black grid shower screens.

The bathroom is small

Frameless. Not because it makes a room look bigger — the room reads much as it would with no glass there at all. It is that a frame puts something in the way, and a dark one with a grid in it puts rather a lot.

Most bathrooms match more than one of these, and where they pull in different directions the wall and the glass usually settle it. One thing outranks all of them: if safety comes first — an elderly user, or an accident in a previous shower — that is framed, with laminated glass.

Both routes, built

Two framed and two frameless, chosen because each one shows the reasoning on this page working in a real bathroom. Click through for full photographs, hardware specifications and notes on how each was built.

Framed and frameless questions

Which is better, a framed or frameless shower enclosure?

Neither, in the abstract — they fail and succeed at different things. Frameless suits bathrooms where the walls are not perfectly true, where the room is an awkward shape, and where you want the glass to disappear. Framed suits rooms that are accurate and generous, and it is the only route for textured, fluted, laminated or grid glass. In practice the decision is usually made by three things you can check yourself: how straight your walls are, how rough your tiles are, and what glass you want in it.

Is a frameless shower watertight?

Not in the sense of a sealed tank — no shower enclosure is. A shower door is not bedded in silicone; it runs on seals, and seals meet at junctions, so there is always a small gap where the vertical and horizontal ones come together. Aim a handheld into a bottom corner, or at the hinges of a frameless door, and water will find it. Block the drain and the tray fills and goes over. That is true of every shower ever built, and the word watertight sets an expectation none of them meets. Framed does hold water better, and it is not close: the hinges sit on the frame, so nothing interrupts the seal where a frameless door has to break it. On frameless we close the gap as far as it closes — our own seals paired with a rounded threshold under the door. In normal use both are dry.

What is the price difference between framed and frameless shower screens?

It runs the opposite way to the high street. In mass-market bathrooms framed is the budget option because it can be made by the thousand; in bespoke work framed is the considered spend and frameless is the more affordable route. The reason is labour rather than materials. One of our framed showers is several days of workshop work — extrusions cut and assembled, carbon fibre fitted into the cavities, every part finished to your colour — and then more hours on site, because each cover plate is trimmed to size in your bathroom. A frameless one is glass, a few brackets and a pair of hinges, with almost all the skill in the measuring.

What does semi-frameless mean?

It usually means U-channels. The fixed panels sit in slim channels screwed to the wall, floor or ceiling, with the mastic applied inside the profile so none of it is ever visible, while the door itself stays completely frameless. It is a middle position rather than a compromise: you get most of the frameless look, a more secure fixing, and no exposed mastic to discolour later. Around 99 out of every 100 U-channels we fit are aluminium, bought ready-made in an anodised finish.

Can a frameless shower door have fluted or reeded glass?

No — but a frameless fixed screen can, and that distinction matters. A door hangs: one side carries it, there is a gap underneath, and the whole weight passes through the hinges. Those hinges grip by clamping a rubber gasket against each face of the glass, and on a ribbed face the gasket only touches the tips of the ribs. A fixed screen does not hang at all; it stands on the floor, the bath or a half-wall, so nothing is being carried. That is why an arched fluted screen with no frame is possible while a fluted door is always framed. Laminated glass, including standard reeded, needs a frame wherever it goes, because an open edge lets water reach the interlayer.

Which way should a shower door swing?

On a frameless door you do not have to choose — ours swing both ways as standard, 90° in each direction. The question only arises if you want it restricted to one side, or if the shower is framed, where the door opens one way through a full 180°. Where a direction has to be picked, we suggest outward: if someone falls against the door it pushes open rather than trapping them inside, and that outranks everything else. The argument for inward is water — droplets on the glass run back into the tray as the door opens, rather than onto the bathroom floor. We will fit it inward where there are no safety concerns, no elderly or less mobile users in the house, but we would not lead with it.

Will it work on a stud wall?

A framed shower will, and this is one of its real advantages — it attaches easily to thin stud walls or walls without much reinforcement behind them, because the frame carries the load and spreads it. Frameless needs solid fixing: the glass is the structure, so the brackets have to go into something that can take it. Wide frameless panels also flex — a narrow panel is rigid against a wall, a metre-wide one will move noticeably — so anything not running to the ceiling needs a support bar back to the wall. If your walls are studwork, tell us at survey and it will shape the recommendation.

Not sure which one your bathroom wants?

Send us the room — measurements if you have them, photographs if you do not, and a note about the walls and the tiles. We will tell you which route we would build it in and why, and quote the whole thing: survey, design, manufacture and installation.

or call 0333 090 8736

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