Type these three words into a search box - glass, sliding, bathroom - and about three different industries answer you. A bathtub enclosure maker answers with a range of 56 to 60 inches. A pocket-door frame maker answers with a formula. An architectural aluminium door maker, which is what we are, answers with a maximum sash size in millimetres. All three answers are correct and no two of them are the same measurement.
We have written elsewhere about the sizes of patio sliding doors, about rough openings and about how a nominal size is not the thing you buy. This piece starts where those cannot reach: the room is the smallest in the plan, it is the wettest, and the number you need does not exist yet at the moment you are most tempted to order.
The first thing to settle is not a dimension. It is which of three products you are buying, because each one produces its size on a different day, in a different unit, by a different trade.
| Product | What it separates | What it must resist | Who produces the size | When the number first exists | What it can never be |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bathtub or shower bypass enclosure | The wet zone from the rest of the room | Splash, standing water in the track, daily cycles, walls that are not plumb | The enclosure maker, against your finished surfaces | Only after tile, backer board and the base are in | A room door, an egress opening, or a panel you can trim |
| Bathroom-to-passage sliding door (pocket, surface or barn) | The room from the corridor or bedroom | Privacy, a latch that works from both sides, the ventilation path | The frame kit maker, from a formula on your stud | At framing, before the wall is closed | Installed in a wall that carries the plumbing |
| Full-height architectural sliding door to a terrace, deck or spa | Conditioned space from outside | Wind, driven rain, thermal bridging, security, the floor level | The system door maker, from your structural opening | At design, in millimetres, as a maximum | Buried in a thin interior partition (see the depth section) |
This matters more in a bathroom than anywhere else in a house because the trade that decides the number is never the trade that buys the door. For the enclosure it is the tiler. For the pocket it is the framer. For the envelope door it is whoever drew the wall. None of the three is holding the purchase order.
If the height in your head is near 58 inches, you are buying a tub door. Near 76, a shower door. At 80, a door to a room. Those are three products from three supply chains, and you cannot trade between them by adjusting a number.
| Published height band | What the room actually is | Why that height | Who sells it |
|---|---|---|---|
| 55 to 62 in | Bathtub and shower combination, measured from the tub deck or the curb | It only has to hold splash above a fixed ledge, not above a head | Enclosure maker |
| 70 to 79 in | Walk-in shower | Contains spray at head height while leaving an air path above the top rail | Enclosure maker |
| 80 in nominal | A door to a room | It matches the interior door slab in the rest of the house | Door and hardware maker |
| 84 1/2 in rough | The hole above a pocket door | Slab plus track, hangers, adjustment and floor clearance | Frame kit maker |
One trade guide adds a number that looks like a mistake and is not: your ceiling height does not set your shower door height. Leaving open space above the top rail is deliberate, because it lets air move and stops moisture collecting in the top of the enclosure. The gap is part of the design, not a shortfall to be closed with a taller panel.
The 60 inches that dominates this search term is not a door size at all. It is the length of an alcove bathtub. A widely reproduced opening guide puts it plainly: alcove bathtubs are commonly 60 inches wide, and when you frame the alcove you do not add extra space for the tub - it must be exactly 60 inches.
| The number | What it actually is | Who hands it to you |
|---|---|---|
| 60 in | The framed alcove, and the nominal name on the door box | The bathtub manufacturer |
| 59 7/8 in | The tub itself in a direct-to-stud installation, where the surround screws to bare studs | The tub maker, and it varies by make |
| 58 in | What is left for the door once the alcove has wall coverings and the frame needs clearance on both sides | Nobody - it is what remains after two trades have taken their share |
| 56 to 60 in | The band a single enclosure model will accept, realised by trimming the rails | The enclosure maker |
One commercial procurement guide states the mechanism in a single sentence: drywall, backer board, waterproof membrane and tile reduce the opening width by one to two inches. So the sequence in this room is that a plumbing fixture fixes 60, the wall finish takes one to two inches off it, and the door is bought into whatever is left.
The door is the last thing sized in this room and the first thing blamed. It is sized after the tub is set, after the board is up, after the membrane is on and after the tile is finished - which is to say, after every decision that could have made room for it.
A bypass door has two panels in one plane. They have to overlap, and the overlap is not sloppiness - it is the only thing keeping water in. That geometry means the hole you walk through is a fraction of the width you bought, and the fraction is not printed on the box in any consistent way.
| Public source | Nominal unit width | Published walk-in opening | Share of nominal (our arithmetic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| A widely reproduced shower opening guide | 60 in | 22 to 25 3/8 in | 36.7 to 42.3 per cent |
| A shower-door retailer size guide | 48 to 60 in | 22 to 25.375 in | 36.7 to 42.3 per cent at 60 in |
| A bathroom remodelling guide | 60 in tub, two panels of about 28 to 30 in | about 22 to 24 in | 36.7 to 40.0 per cent |
| A semi-frameless bypass tub door listing, 56 to 60 in wide by 58 in high | 56 to 60 in | 23 1/2 to 27 1/2 in | 39.2 to 45.8 per cent |
| A frameless bypass tub door listing, 56 to 60 in wide by 60 in high | 56 to 60 in | 24 to 28 in, with a largest opening of 31 5/16 in | 40.0 to 46.7 per cent, and 52.2 per cent at the largest opening |
| A retail bypass tub enclosure listing, 56 to 60 in wide by 58 in high | 56 to 60 in | 28 1/2 in wide by 54 1/2 in high | 47.5 per cent |
At the same nominal 60 inches, the published walk-in figures run from 22 inches to 31 5/16 inches. The largest is about 1.42 times the smallest. That is not a rounding difference; it is the difference between stepping into a shower and turning sideways into it. We are not going to tell you which of these six numbers is right, because they come from six different products and all six are describing their own hardware.
The usable rule is therefore not "the door is 60 inches". It is this: a bypass door hands you somewhere between about thirty-seven and about fifty-two per cent of its nominal width as a hole you can walk through. If you need 24 inches of passage, you are not buying a 24 inch door. You are buying roughly twice that much wall.
The 56 to 60 inch label is not a size. It is a band. Both of the listings above state that the top and bottom rails can be trimmed up to 4 inches for width adjustment, and a retail listing says the same. Which means the dimension becomes a number in a bathroom, with a saw, on the day of installation.
| Adjustment | Published figure | What it is really telling you |
|---|---|---|
| Acceptable width band | 56 to 60 in | The unit is sold as a range, not a dimension |
| Trim allowance on the rails | up to 4 in | A range becomes a number on site, in metal, irreversibly |
| Out-of-plumb allowance, one model | up to 3/8 in | The wall may lean this much and the wall profiles still work |
| Out-of-plumb allowance, a second model from the same maker | up to 1/4 in | The allowance is a per-model number, not a standard |
| Practical plumb test | more than 1/4 in between top, middle and bottom readings | Past this, one size guide says to choose framed hardware or bring in an installer |
| Loss to a protruding bullnose tile edge | up to 1/2 in per side | The tile you chose narrows the opening the door has to live in |
Read the second row against the next section and the whole product becomes clear. The metal is adjustable by four inches and the glass is adjustable by zero. Every tolerance in this product is spent on the frame.
Tempered glass cannot be cut, drilled or modified after tempering. Every hole for a hinge, a handle or a towel bar has to be made before the glass goes through the furnace. That single fact is why the measuring day in a bathroom is irreversible: tile can be re-cut, board can be shimmed, rails can be trimmed by four inches, and the glass cannot be touched at all.
Which explains the instruction printed in capitals on more than one enclosure listing: all measurements should be taken only after walls are finished. It is not a suggestion about tidiness. It is the only moment at which the number exists.
In listings for this product the phrase bathroom sliding door glass almost always refers to the panel - meaning thickness, tint and coating - and almost never to the opening. That is the whole problem in two words: the glass is what gets specified, the opening is what gets walked through, and only one of them is printed.
| Frame type | Thickness published by public sources | What carries the load | What follows from it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fully framed | 3/16 in (5 mm) per one remodelling guide; 1/4 in (6 mm) minimum per a thickness guide | The metal frame on all four edges | Lightest, cheapest, and the most forgiving of a wall that leans |
| Semi-frameless | 5/16 to 3/8 in (8 to 10 mm) typical; two shipping products publish 5/16 in (8 mm) | Partial frame plus the glass on the unframed edges | The published minimum and the shipped thickness are not the same number |
| Frameless | 3/8 to 1/2 in (10 to 12 mm) | The glass itself, through hinges, clamps and channels | Needs blocking behind the tile; one guide states tile over drywall alone is not adequate |
On the marking: public glazing sources are consistent that shower glass must be tempered or laminated safety glass carrying a permanent etched or sandblasted mark that names the maker, the standard (ANSI Z97.1 or CPSC 16 CFR 1201) and the type of safety glazing. Annealed glass is not compliant and is not safe in this position. If you cannot find the mark, treat that as a finding, not a formality.
Thickness is sold in inches. Rollers, hinges and wall blocking are rated in weight. Somebody converts between the two, and public sources do it differently.
| Source for a 30 by 72 in panel at 3/8 in | Figure | Note |
|---|---|---|
| A published glazing contractor, weight per square foot | about 4.9 lb per square foot, so about 73 lb for 15 square feet | Given as a rule for specifying hinge ratings |
| Our own arithmetic, using about 2.5 kg per square metre per millimetre | about 33 kg, which is about 73 lb | The rule of thumb is an industry value, not a manufacturer published value |
| A published glass thickness guide, panel weight table | about 37 lb | Close to half of the other two figures |
We are not adjudicating. We are pointing at the gap, because the gap is where the failure lives: a roller, a hinge and a piece of wall blocking are all rated in weight, and nobody prints which of these two conversions produced the rating. Ask which one was used, and ask for the glass build-up it was calculated against.
For scale, using the same rule of thumb, a 30 by 72 in panel is about 22 kg at 1/4 in, about 28 kg at 5/16 in, about 33 kg at 3/8 in and about 44 kg at 1/2 in. Two frameless panels at the top of that range put about 88 kg onto the top track of a door that a person opens with one wet hand.
Everybody measures width and height. The number that actually stops a bathroom sliding door is depth, and it turns up twice, in two different directions.
The first depth is horizontal. A frameless bypass tub door listing requires a minimum threshold depth of 2 3/4 in and states that drilling into the threshold is required for installation. Before you choose that door you must own about 70 mm of horizontal ledge - and the moment you drill it, the decision is permanent. No other door in the house asks you to modify a fixture in order to receive it.
The second depth is into the wall, and it is the one that decides whether an architectural aluminium sliding door can be used here at all.
| Wall built-up (our arithmetic from standard board thicknesses) | Finished thickness | What it is in a plan |
|---|---|---|
| 2x4 stud (3.5 in) plus 1/2 in board on both faces | about 114 mm | The ordinary internal partition |
| 2x6 stud (5.5 in) plus 1/2 in board on both faces | about 165 mm | The wall many plans use where a soil stack and vent have to run |
Now put the published frame depths of our own sliding door series next to those two numbers. Frame wall width is the depth of frame that goes into the wall; a wall thickness is a stud plus board built-up. They are not the same measurement. They collide anyway, because if the frame is deeper than the wall, the frame is what the next room sees.
| Published frame wall width | Series | Against a 114 mm partition | Against a 165 mm wet wall |
|---|---|---|---|
| 112 mm | SL112/167, single or two track | about 2 mm inside - the only one that fits | about 53 mm of wall to spare |
| 126 mm | SL126/182, two track | about 12 mm proud | about 39 mm inside |
| 155 mm | SL155, four track | about 41 mm proud | about 10 mm inside |
| 167 mm | SL112/167, three track | about 53 mm proud | about 2 mm proud |
| 182 mm | SL126/182, three track | about 68 mm proud | about 17 mm proud |
This is the honest answer to a good half of the enquiries behind this search term. A standard interior partition is thinner than four of the five frame depths we publish. If what you meant was a sliding door between a bedroom and an ensuite, the frame is not the problem you think it is - the wall is.
| Threshold | Published height | What it buys | What it costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Low track, SL126/182 | 8 mm | A floor you can walk across without thinking about it | On its own it holds no water - the drained floor has to be designed as a system |
| High track, SL126/182 | 43 mm | A real dam, and a drainage path that lives in the profile | A 43 mm step in a room where people are barefoot and the floor is wet |
| High-ｄｒｏｐ bottom track, SL112/167 | 45 mm, with an optional 85 mm water barrier | Instant drainage and a kerb that will hold a real volume of water | The 85 mm option is a kerb, and it is not an accessibility feature |
| Track heights, TS130 side press window | 53 and 31 mm | Two numbers, because there are two tracks | Sorting two numbers in one column is how a specification gets misread |
| Requirement for a frameless bypass tub door | about 70 mm of horizontal ledge, and it must be drilled | A surface the bottom guide can be fixed to | The tub or the curb is modified permanently to receive the door |
One line puts the two halves of this article next to each other: our lowest published threshold is about as tall as the glass in the other product is thick. Eight millimetres of aluminium and eight millimetres of glass, doing completely different jobs in the same room.
In a wet room the 43 mm track is simultaneously the best waterproofing you can buy and the step your guest trips over. It is one decision, and it has to be made before the floor is levelled rather than after, because a drained floor, a former and a threshold are a single system and none of them can be added later.
If what you actually meant was a door from the passage into the bathroom, the size is not measured. It is derived, from the slab, before the wall exists.
| Slab width | Rough opening width, two times the slab plus one inch | What that asks of the room |
|---|---|---|
| 26 in | 53 in | A small half bath wall, if nothing else lives in it |
| 28 in | 57 in | A secondary passage |
| 30 in | 61 in | A common bathroom slab, and more wall than most plans have free |
| 32 in | 65 in | Where an accessible clear width is being designed for |
| 34 in | 69 in | Nearly six feet of uninterrupted wall |
| 36 in | 73 in | Just over six feet, which is why one guide calls an existing opening a widening job |
The height allowance is published twice with two different values: door height plus 4 1/2 in by a frame manufacturer and a door supplier, and door height plus 4 3/4 in by a trade guide citing a specific kit. For an 80 in slab that is 84 1/2 or 84 3/4. We are not going to reconcile them. The lesson is the one the trade guide itself draws: the kit instructions beat the rule of thumb, every time.
| Name of the number | Width | Height |
|---|---|---|
| Nominal slab | 30 in | 80 in |
| Actual slab | 29 3/4 in | 79 3/8 in |
| Pre-hung unit, actual | 31 5/16 in | 81 1/4 in |
| Advised opening | 32 in | 82 in |
Two inches of width and two and five-eighths inches of height separate the smallest and largest of those four pairs. None of them is wrong and only one of them is on the box. If you have ever wondered why a bathroom door order goes wrong, it goes wrong here, in a column nobody reads.
A pocket needs a hollow wall. Public guides are blunt about it: the pocket cavity cannot contain electrical outlets or plumbing, because the screws would pierce the sliding door; and buried plumbing supply or drain lines are described by one guide as almost always a deal-breaker.
A pocket door asks for the emptiest wall in the house. In a bathroom, the wall you would most want to put it in is the one carrying the basin waste and the vent stack. That is the whole difficulty, and it is not a product problem.
Put the two halves of this article side by side and they say the same thing in two languages. A bypass enclosure gives you somewhere between about thirty-seven and about fifty-two per cent of nominal as passage. A pocket door needs two times the slab width plus one inch of rough opening. Both are the same sentence: you do not ｄｅｌｅｔｅ the space a door needs. You move it from the floor in front of the door to the wall beside it, and you pay for it twice.
The trade-off is real, and it is worth stating fairly. One remodelling guide puts the clearance a hinged shower door needs at 24 to 30 inches in front of it; a slider needs none of it. In a bathroom where the swing arc would cross the vanity, the toilet or the towel rail, that is the entire argument for sliding, and it is a good one.
The catch is where the wall has to come from. In a bathroom, the wall beside the opening is where the basin, the cistern, the towel rail, the extract switch and the mirror live. So the honest answer to "should the bathroom door slide" is very often no - with one exception, and it is the exception that produced this search term in the first place: the shower itself. There, the passage you need is smaller, the thing you are protecting is the floor, and the swing arc is exactly what would cross it.
There is one case, and it is not the one most of this search traffic means: a bathroom that opens to a terrace, a deck, a courtyard or a spa, where the door is part of the building envelope rather than a fitting inside a room.
| Series | Published frame depth and tracks | Published maxima and load | What it means in this room |
|---|---|---|---|
| SL112/167 | 112 mm single or two track, 167 mm three track; 45 mm high-ｄｒｏｐ bottom track with an optional 85 mm water barrier | Single sash driving capacity up to 220 kg | The 112 mm two track is the only frame we publish that is shallower than a 114 mm partition |
| SL126/182 (75) | 126 mm two track, 182 mm three track; high track 43 mm, low track 8 mm | Single sash up to 2.5 m wide by 3.0 m high | The 8 mm low track is the only threshold we publish that a level wet floor can meet |
| SL126/182 (96) | Same frame depths and the same tracks | Same maxima | The difference is a 96 mm sash against a 75 mm sash - you are choosing what you see, not what you get |
| SL155 | 155 mm four track; our published material does not list a low-track option for this series | Single sash max 2.8 m by 2.6 m; 20-wheel pulley at 400 kg | Four tracks in a bathroom is a wall of glass you will never open more than a third of |
For scale, and this is our own arithmetic: a 60 by 58 in tub enclosure is about 2.25 square metres of opening. The smallest published maximum single sash in our sliding door catalogue is 2.5 m by 3.0 m. Every number in our catalogue is a ceiling, and a bathroom asks for a floor. We do not publish a minimum sash width, a minimum sash weight or a glass rebate, and for this room those are the numbers you actually need.
| Item | What we publish | Why the gap exists | What to do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minimum sash width | Nothing | We publish maxima only | Ask for the smallest sash the lock and hardware will work on |
| Minimum sash weight | Nothing | Same reason | Ask for the roller rating per sash, in kilograms, against your glass build-up |
| Glass rebate | Sash thickness only | Sash thickness is a stack-up, not the rebate | Ask for the section drawing with the rebate dimension marked |
| Thermal value of the sliding door series | Nothing for these series | The values we publish are system values for named casement and tilt-turn series, not whole-door values and not your rating scheme | Ask for a calculated value for your opening, glass and standard, in writing |
| 240 hour salt spray | One published test result, on one series | It is a coating and substrate result and it does not transfer to other series | Ask which series, which coating, and whether it is a project qualification |
| 5,000 N shear | One published result, on one series | It measures the composite bond between the thermal strip and the aluminium | Ask what you assumed it measured, then ask again |
| 200, 220 and 400 kg | Three numbers on three different products | They are not one measurement; sorting them in a single descending column is the first way this catalogue gets misread | Ask per sash, with the glass build-up it was calculated against |
| Air, water and wind ratings | Nothing | No rating is printed for any series | Ask for the report, the standard name, and whether the specimen was the opening configuration |
| Threshold heights | 8, 43, 45, 53 and 31 mm across the range | No gap - these are real and they are the decision | Choose before the floor is levelled, not after |
| Which plant builds your order | Two production centres, Foshan and Zhaoqing | A catalogue has one address field | Ask which plant, in writing, and keep it with the order |
| Shower and bathtub enclosures | We do not make them | This is not a gap - it is a different industry with a different measuring day | If that is what you are buying, we will say so plainly rather than offer you a door |
| A sliding window for a small bathroom opening | One product, and it is a side press window | It is not a standard two-track sliding window | If you want an ordinary two-track slider, we will say we do not have one |
| Situation | Why it fails | Ask for this instead |
|---|---|---|
| The wall beside the opening carries the basin waste or the vent | A pocket cannot be built there and a surface slider buries the switch and the towel rail | A swing door, with the arc drawn on the plan before the sanitaryware is ordered |
| You need the widest possible passage through a narrow opening | A bypass hands you roughly thirty-seven to fifty-two per cent of nominal | A shower swing door, which gives you the full panel width as the opening |
| The opening is wide but there is no wall beside it | A bypass still needs somewhere to park the moving panel | Consider folding shower doors, which fold inside the opening rather than beside it |
| The floor has to be flush for accessibility | A 43 mm or 45 mm track is a step, and the 85 mm barrier is a kerb | The 8 mm low track, with a drained floor designed as a system rather than as a door decision |
| You want the room quiet | A panel that has to move needs clearance, so it seals by contact rather than by compression | A compression-sealed casement or tilt-turn window for the opening that is not the door |
| The finished opening is under about 22 in | One size guide calls 22 in the practical floor and describes anything below it as a space that feels like showering in a closet | Re-plan the room; no door product fixes a hole that small |
| You are replacing a shower enclosure | That is a glass and hardware product measured after tiling, from a different supply chain | A local glazier who measures the finished opening, not a door catalogue |
A bathroom sliding door is unlike every other door in the house because the number keeps moving right up to the point where it does not, and each moment is owned by a different person. This is the sequence, in the order the room is actually built.
| Decision | Who holds the pen | The moment it locks | Reversible after that |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alcove width | Framer | When the studs are nailed | No - and this is where the 60 in came from |
| Board, membrane and tile build-up | Designer and tiler | When the tile is ordered | Only by chasing the wall out |
| Finished opening width and height | Nobody in particular | When the tile is grouted | This is the number you have to capture before the tiler leaves |
| Glass thickness and build-up | You and the glass supplier | When the panel enters the furnace | No - and the handle holes are already in it |
| Threshold or ledge | You and the tiler | When it is drilled | No - the fixture is modified to receive the door |
| Wall depth | Framer | When the wall is closed | Only by building a new wall |
| Which side the panel slides to | Installer | At installation, on models that allow it | Yes on listings that state reversible installation - check yours |
Two rows in that table are worth more than the rest of this page. The first is row three: the finished opening is the only number in the whole job that belongs to nobody. The framer owns the rough opening, the tiler owns the finish, and the finished opening is the gap between the two that each assumes the other measured. Send somebody with a tape on the day the tile is finished and write down all three widths.
The second is row seven, and it is the only good news here. Some bypass units are listed with reversible installation, meaning the installer picks which end the entry sits at on the day. That is the one decision on this list you get back after delivery - provided the listing you bought actually says so, because it is not universal.
| Line | Fill in | What happens if it is blank |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Which of the three products | shower or tub enclosure / room door / envelope door to outside: ____ | A quotation from the wrong industry |
| 2. Finished opening width, in mm, at three heights, after tile | top ____ / middle ____ / bottom ____ | A nominal size is assumed and the narrowest reading is discovered on site |
| 3. Finished opening height, both sides, and the datum | left ____ / right ____, from finished floor / tub deck / curb (ｄｅｌｅｔｅ two) | The panel is made to the wrong datum and cannot be cut |
| 4. Tile build-up | backer ____ / membrane ____ / adhesive ____ / tile ____ / bullnose yes or no | The opening shrinks by one to two inches after you ordered |
| 5. Out of plumb | difference between the three width readings: ____ | Frameless hardware drawn where only framed hardware will fit |
| 6. Glass build-up, thickness in mm, tempered or laminated | ____ mm, ____ | Every rating downstream is a guess |
| 7. Named standard on the permanent mark | ____ | Nothing to check at handover |
| 8. Passage width you actually need, in mm | ____ | You buy nominal and receive about half of it as a hole |
| 9. Threshold: ledge depth in mm, and is drilling it acceptable | ____ mm, yes or no | An irreversible act, decided by whoever is holding the drill |
| 10. Wall build-up, outside face to inside face, layer by layer | ____ + ____ + ____ + ____ | A frame deeper than the wall, discovered on delivery |
| 11. Who signs the perimeter sealing, and who is first responder | ____ / ____ | Two trades pointing at each other while the room is out of use |
| 12. Which plant, and the coating batch rule | ____ / ____ | A later replacement panel that does not match the frame it sits in |
| Question | The answer that sounds right and says nothing | What a real answer contains |
|---|---|---|
| What size do I need? | Sixty inch is standard. | The finished opening range of the exact model, and an explicit statement that it is a range |
| How wide does it open? | It is a sixty inch door. | The walk-in opening, as a number, in the same units, taken from the listing |
| Can I measure now? | Just measure the studs. | Whether the number is finished or rough, and who re-measures after tiling |
| Is the glass safe? | It is tempered. | The standard named on the permanent mark, and whether it is tempered or laminated |
| Can it be cut to fit? | The installer will sort it. | Which parts can be trimmed, by how much, and that the glass cannot be modified at all |
| Will it fit my wall? | It is a standard wall. | Your wall build-up in mm, layer by layer, against the published frame depth |
| How much weight will it take? | It is heavy duty. | A kilograms figure per sash, with the glass build-up it was calculated against |
| Is it waterproof? | It has seals. | The track height, the drainage path, and where the water is designed to sit |
| Is it rated? | It meets international standards. | The standard name, the report, and whether the specimen was the opening configuration |
| Can I get a replacement panel later? | Spare parts are available. | The batch number, the section drawing and the glass build-up, recorded per opening |
No, and the word is doing two different jobs. Sixty inches is the framed alcove and the nominal name on the box. The tub itself is usually slightly under it - one guide puts it at about 59 7/8 in for a direct-to-stud installation - and once the alcove has wall coverings plus frame clearance, the door that fits is around 58 in. Published enclosure ranges of 56 to 60 in are bands, realised by trimming the rails by up to four inches on site.
Somewhere between about thirty-seven and about fifty-two per cent of nominal, according to the six public figures we collected at a nominal 60 inches - from 22 in at the low end to 31 5/16 in at the top. The largest is about 1.42 times the smallest. Ask for the walk-in opening of the exact model, in the same units, before you compare anything.
Because board, membrane, adhesive and tile take one to two inches off the opening, and because tempered glass cannot be cut, drilled or modified after tempering. Everything else in the room can be trimmed; the glass cannot. One manufacturer prints the instruction in capitals on more than one of its listings: measure only after walls are finished.
We are not going to give you a number, because public sources disagree and the requirement belongs to your authority. What we can say is that thickness follows the frame type - framed systems publish thinner glass than frameless ones, because the metal carries load that frameless glass has to carry itself - and that the thickness is the dimension that decides whether your wall needs blocking behind the tile. Ask your authority, then ask your supplier to state the thickness in millimetres on the order.
Usually not, and for a reason that has nothing to do with the door. A 2x4 partition with board on both faces finishes at about 114 mm, and four of the five frame depths we publish are deeper than that - 126, 155, 167 and 182 mm. Only the 112 mm two-track frame is shallower. Where it does work is a bathroom opening onto a terrace or spa, where the wall is an external wall and the door is part of the envelope. You can see that kind of work on our completed projects page.
No. We make architectural aluminium windows and doors, including four sliding door series, and none of them is a bathtub or shower enclosure. If that is what you are buying, we will say so rather than offer you a door that happens to slide. What we can do for a bathroom is the opening that goes to the outside, and the windows in it.
