This is absolutely essential!!!
Never use sliding tracks.As
mentioned above,the tracks are hard to clean. And they are very inconvenient–you cant sit on the edge of the tub,the tracks get in your way if you want to bend over the edge to ,say, wash a child.
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My new rental has glass doors and they are beautiful, but they are very difficult to care for. Having to squeegee and then dry the doors with a towel after every use, is a pain in the rear. I’ve even stopped taking two showers a day.
I used a curtain with a liner at my last place and I could wash the liner with bleach about 3 or 4 times a year without any problem. I’d go back to a curtain in a heartbeat. Plus they have very pretty colorful curtains these days.
Well this has been a great wealth of information! Thank you!
What I mind most about the present curtain is that it lets a lot of water get onto the floor. Also I really dislike it when it blows against me and sometimes wraps around me.
I think I want to find the devices for securing the ends of the curtain, and get a bow shaped rod, and find a heavier inner curtain. I think I’m happy with the ease of just replacing it rather than struggling to clean it.
I like glass. That being said its a pain in the arse with cleaning, the odd leaks now and then, and other issues. And replacing can be a major chore. But — got one now, had one before, and will probably have another before I die. Go figure.
I can clean my glass shower enclosure and get it spotless. The very next time I take a shower, water spots start building up, within a couple of days it looks awful.
Then the glass wall must be so far from the shower that it doesn’t get wet. Otherwise, I don’t see how it could “always look spotless.”
Spray it with what? Please, I would give actual money for something like this that really works.
The only thing I have found that keeps a glass shower enclosure clean for a few days at least is a RainX product designed for the purpose. But the chemical smell is so strong while applying it that I have to stop and go breathe fresh air for a few minutes at least twice during the process, and that’s with the bathroom fan on.
I think rather than simply frosted smooth glass, maybe textured and frosted glass would hide the water spots better? I’m not sure, I suppose that would be harder to clean. If I had it to do over I’m not sure what I would do.
Curtain. Every time. On less hard surface to bang my elbows and knees on.
As many have stated, much easier to keep clean and much cheaper to replace.
HATE glass doors on tracks. Soap scum gets in the tracks, too, and even cleaning it with an old toothbrush doesn’t really work (and it’s a pain in the *ss).
Neither! India-style floor drain in open shower area in corner of bathroom for the win!!!
Okay, that wasn’t very helpful, but it is a potential alternative for larger bathrooms, and hella fun.
I’ve seen a bathroom where the shower stall had sliding glass doors, that actually slid into the wall (pocket doors), leaving the bathroom much more open & spacious looking. Also, being hidden most of the time reduced the need for cleaning.
This only works if the design of the bathroom allows it. And it required the builder to replace the standard track with an extended track. But it’s really liked by the owners.
This is what we did when we lived in the U.S. Also, because the curtain rod was really high, the former owners used 4 curtain hooks linked together for each hole, to get the bottom of the curtain sufficiently in the tub.
We now have a separate shower enclosure, so the tub never does double duty as a shower. Much nicer for soaking.
grandmas shower had the sliding doors but they had something like frosted plexiglass because of of the grandkids…but yeah we cut ourselves on the track once or twice
To be honest id prefer neither if its a small/tiny bathroom
I’m trying to psych myself up to have my bathroom (with an over-bath shower) re-done. I have a cloth (artificial fibre) curtain at the moment, which isn’t a problem in itself (it’s plain white, gets washed a couple of times a year after a lengthy soak in diluted distilled vinegar to get rid of accumulated limescale, overlaps enough with the edge of the bath not to spray anywhere, and it doesn’t drift in and cling).
However, the rail I put up for it about 20 years ago just looks inelegant and amateurish, so I’d like a screen, probably part-fixed and part-hinged. I don’t quite get the concern about spots - I’ve used glass-screened showers elsewhere, and found a wiper-blade clears any residue pretty quickly. If there is residual limescale (and London has very hard water), an occasional going over with the distilled vinegar should take care of that, as it does with my taps and the bath and basin.
Or am I missing something?
I am puzzled about the issue of spots on frosted glass.
We have semi-hard water and all I do is spray and wipe the shower door once a week during my cleaning routine. And that’s just to prevent long term buildup. They pretty much look the same before and after.
Same for the sliding bath doors we had way back when.
And cleaning the bottom track was never an issue. It was flat with an upward thing on the outside edge. So a simple spray and swipe works there.
Now, the shower door seal is a problem due to the vinyl gasket wanting to grab crap. But this is a ~35 year old door. A modern shower door should have a much better system.
Forgot about the bottom edge on the rim of the bathtub being a problem. Couldn’t sit or lean over because of it. And this was in the day of the kids being little.
Curtain, makes it easy to change the look of the bathroom overnight just by changing the curtain.
Plus, I hated cleaning the glass as a kid.
Sliding glass door. I agree about the slider rails, they collect dirt and grime and scaling. I just finished a remodel and it is suspended from above. Clear glass, not frosted, for a cleaner look. Easy to clean, a quick squeegee after my shower.
I saw a house once where the master bedroom had a master bathroom with a shower and the shower had a very low lip, was very long, like 10 foot, with the floor slightly angled towards the drain in the far corner. They said they never even used a curtain.
If you have a nice roomy shower stall, a glass door is nice. It feels lighter in the shower that way. But if you have a smaller stall, or a tub, use a curtain. There’s more room. You can sit on the edge of the tub. You don’t bang your elbows. You can sit IN the tub and rest your book on the edge of the tub. You can install an extra bulb over the tub to make the space bright and cheery.
I’ve never had trouble with water leaking out of the curtain, though. I’m not even certain if the mechanism for it leaking.
Yeah, that’s pretty standard for bathrooms in India, for example. If you’re trying to keep shower water within a radius of less than one meter as in most tub/shower enclosures, you do need some kind of barrier. But if you’ve got a couple meters or more of space between the shower and all the stuff you don’t want sprayed with shower water, then you can just leave the space open.
Or there’s my personal dream bath with sunken tub/shower enclosure about 5 ft deep by 3 ft by 4 ft, for showering or bathing entirely beneath floor level! No curtain, no door, no shower spillage, no cold drafts! Did I mention the waterproof LED lights behind glass brick walls to facilitate reading in the sunken tub? 
This makes me think that you’ve hung the liner wrong. You do need to have the bottom of liner inside the tub to keep the water from leaking past it. And if your liner is heavy enough, it doesn’t blow against you. Target sells a clear one for about $5 that doesn’t try to attack you.
Or the curtain and liner aren’t long enough for the bottom to remain inside the shower pan.
And a rod that bows out will give extra inches of elbow room, like Napier said.
If your tub or shower pan have metal, some shower curtains have magnets at the bottom corners. This also helps anchor the curtain.