Dallas Glass Shower Door Installations

Frameless uses thick tempered glass — typically 3/8″ or 1/2″ — held by minimal hardware with no metal around the glass edges. Semi-frameless has framing on the fixed perimeter but leaves the door edges frameless. The visual difference is real but smaller than the price difference. The practical difference matters more: frameless has nowhere to conceal an out-of-plumb wall, while semi-frameless framing absorbs a surprising amount of error. In an older Dallas home with foundation movement, that tolerance can be the deciding factor.

Usually two to three weeks overall, in two visits. The in-home consultation and template measure take under an hour and are free. Fabrication is the wait — glass must be cut, tempered, polished and notched for your specific hardware, and none of that can be done after tempering. Installation is typically a half-day. Leave the enclosure unused for roughly 24 hours afterward while the sealant cures.

Tile first, always. We template against finished surfaces, because tile thickness, curb height and the final wall plane all change the dimensions. If we measure against backer board and you tile afterward, the glass will not fit. The ideal sequence is tile complete and cured, then template, then fabrication, then install. Worth telling your tile contractor to leave blocking behind the wall where hinges will land.

Yes, without exception. Code designates glazing in and around bathing areas a hazardous location requiring safety glass, and every panel must be permanently marked with the manufacturer's identification. Beyond code it is simply what makes the enclosure safe — tempered glass breaks into blunt granules rather than shards. Anyone offering untempered shower glass is offering something illegal and dangerous.

Spontaneous breakage is rare but genuine, and unnerving because there is no obvious trigger. The usual causes are microscopic nickel sulfide inclusions that expand slowly over years, or edge damage sustained during handling or installation that propagates over time. It is not something you did. When we replace a spontaneously failed panel we check hardware alignment and clamp pressure, since over-torqued hardware creates the stress concentrations that make it more likely.

Clear, obscure and patterned. Clear shows your tile work off and makes a small bathroom read larger, but shows every water spot. Obscure and patterned glass give privacy — useful in shared, guest and kids' bathrooms — and are considerably more forgiving about spotting. Low-iron ultra-clear is worth considering against white or pale tile, where standard glass shows a faint green cast at the edges.

North Texas water is hard, so this is a real concern rather than a sales pitch. Three things help: a factory-applied protective coating at fabrication, far more durable than anything applied later; a squeegee kept in the shower and used after each use, which does more than any product; and choosing obscure or patterned glass if you know you will not squeegee. Untreated clear glass in Dallas water shows deposits within months without maintenance.

Yes — it is one of the things we are known for. Bent glass is fabricated by heating flat glass over a mold to the specific radius of your enclosure, then tempering it. It is specialist work with longer lead times and less margin for error, which is why many glass shops decline it or subcontract it out. We handle it in-house. If you have a curved shower base or a radius wall, it is very much doable.