Shopping for the right shower door can be confusing. Especially if you conduct your research on the Internet where you’ll often encounter statements like this: “The hinged, or pivoting shower door is the most common type of shower door.” The implication is that hinged and pivoting doors are the same thing. They’re not. While both hinged shower doors and pivoting shower doors have hinges the two doors are actually quite different and it has to do with how they open. Let’s take a closer look at both doors.
Choosing the Right Shower Doors for Mississauga Homes
The side mounted hinged door and pivoting shower door are different animals. But which one is right for your home?
The Hinged Shower Door
You see a lot of hinged shower doors in Mississauga homes. The door is mounted on hinges at the edge of the panel that connect either directly to the wall or to an adjoining glass panel in the shower enclosure, or to a frame. The glass panel hinged shower door typically opens outward and as such requires a fairly considerable amount of space in order for it to be practical.
Hinged Pros
- Hinged doors lend themselves to frameless shower enclosure setups as there’s no need for an overhead support bar to hold a pivot device.
- It’s possible to seal side mount hinges and thereby improve the water tight nature of the enclosure.
Hinged Cons
- If you are attaching the hinged door to another glass panel it will require some precision cuts on that panel and this can drive up the cost.
- All that space that’s required to accommodate the door swinging outwards.
Pivoting Shower Door
A pivoting shower door uses a two part hinge – one part on top of the door, one on the bottom – that allows the door to pivot rather than swing. As such the centre of motion for the door is moved closer to the vertical centre of the door itself. A door mounted in this fashion requires far less space because the entirety of the door is not opening out into the bathroom. In addition, some pivoting shower doors can open either in or out.
Pivot Pros
- The primary benefit of the pivoting door is its space-saving characteristics.
- They’re an ideal choice for smaller bathrooms where there’s no room for sliding doors or for a door to open out into the general bathroom area.
- Because weight is carried mostly by the pivot device at the bottom of the door the entire door mechanism is very strong and stable.
Pivot Cons
- You can’t really seal a pivoting door to make it as water tight as a hinged door.
- A header will be required on most pivoting doors in order to mount to top portion of the pivot mechanism.
Choosing the right shower doors in Mississauga doesn’t have to be a daunting task. Talk to the pros at Keystone. They’ll be happy to answer your shower door questions and recommend the right door for your particular needs.
