Frameless showers must use toughened safety glass in line with regulations. However, there's no need to just stick with regular glass, though beautiful. Why not choose a decorative treatment to enhance the safety glass for your shower screen?

Low-Iron Glass

Standard clear glass displays a faint tinge of green. If you examine the edge of a piece of glass, the cast becomes more evident. Though this characteristic tone is attractive, you can choose a low-iron glass if you want it entirely clear for your shower screens. Low-iron glass is not inherently decorative. Usually, adornment is intended to draw the eye. In this case, however, the point of low-iron glass is to make the glass less noticeable and to emphasise other attractive elements instead, such as beautifully coloured shower tiles.

Frosted Glass

In contrast, the attractive cloudy patterns of frosted glass provide a beautiful decorative feature in themselves. Patterns can simulate rainwater, waves, a cloud-scattered sky and complex geometric schemas, or they can just show uniform cloudiness for a subtle effect. Frosted glass emerges from either acid etching or sandblasting techniques. Both processes erode one side of a piece of glass in a controlled way to create an ornamental surface, but they achieve this differently. Acid etching uses hydrochloric acid and masks to corrode some sections and not others. Sandblasting involves blasting abrasive materials at a glass pane while different stencils are progressively applied to create the final patterns. The advantage of frosted glass, besides the beautiful effect, is the privacy created for those using the shower. 

Patterned Glass

Patterned glass is another decorative option that obscures the screen, providing privacy in the shower. Unlike frosting techniques which enhance a finished glass pane, the patterning process begins much earlier at the point of manufacture. After being heated to a molten state, the glass, as it cools, passes across a patterned roller which imprints and textures the surface. If you run your fingers across a patterned glass shower screen, you can unmistakably feel the textured surface. The glass can be moulded to simulate materials such as tiles or timber, to mimic the texture of a rainforest or to create a myriad of other patterns.

Tinted Glass

Both frosted and patterned glass can be tinted as well. The metal oxides that create the colours infuse the glass mixture from the beginning. Extra iron in the original mix creates a more pronounced green tint; additional cobalt produces blue hues and more selenium results in neutral grey or bronze tones. The thicker the shower screen, the more obvious the tone becomes. Subtly shaded glass that complements other bathroom elements can produce an additional layer of beauty in the bathroom.