6 Basic Shower Door Styles and How to Choose One

Bypass Door

Best for: Tub/shower configurations; wide shower stalls where room space is limited.

Bypass shower doors are sliding doors, operating in much the same way as a patio door. Typically, they consist of two sliding glass panels that roll on tracks attached to the shower enclosure. The doors may simply slide in the tracks, or there may be mechanical rollers that assist the movement.

Bypass doors are used both on stand-alone showers, as well as the shower doors mounted on a bathtub in combination tub/shower configurations. Bypass doors make for efficient use of space since they require no space for the doors to swing out into the bathroom.

Most sliding shower doors have metal tracks that guide the doors, but there are also frameless styles available, though these are considerably more expensive. A standard tracked sliding door is a low-cost, easy to install shower door.

Hinged Door

Best for: Shower stalls where there is plenty of space for door swing.

A hinged shower door is a glass panel that opens by swinging in one direction on pivoting hinges, like a typical passage door in your home. The door hinge can be attached to a stationary glass panel or the wall or shower surround.

This type of door is more common on stand-alone shower stalls, and it requires ample clearance in the bathroom for the door to swing outward. Where this is an issue, you may be able to find inward-swinging options.

Most hinged doors have bottom tracks against which the door rests when in the closed position. These tracks complicate cleaning chores and are not as elegant in appearance as full-pivot doors.

Pivot Door

Best for: Modern shower designs, including curved glass doors.

A pivot shower door is a swinging door that has a pivot hinge allowing the door to open 180 degrees in either direction—inward or outward. The pivot hinge can be attached on one side of the door, or it can be center-mounted to create a revolving shower door. Pivot hinges are the design used on most ultra-modern curved glass shower doors.

These doors are a very good choice for curbless showers that are increasingly popular for homes being adapted to older owners who may need wheelchair accessibility.

Bath Screen Door

Best for: Limited spaces.

Bath screens (also called bi-fold or tri-fold doors) consist of several glass panels. Normally one glass panel is fixed while two other panels fold in on hinges, as screen panels do. In operating, they work much like the folding bifold doors on some closets, and they are used for the same reason that bifold closet doors are used—they make efficient use of space and do not swing out widely into the room space.

These are relatively easy shower doors for DIYers to install, and are usually quite affordable.

Neo-Angle Door

Best for: Corner showers in small bathrooms.

For a small bathroom, a neo-angle shower door can be a real space saver, since a corner shower door configuration cuts across the 90-degree angle created by a corner shower. For this shower door, there are two smaller side panels running perpendicular to two side walls with the door centered between them. Usually, the door opens out into the room in a neo-angle door, but inward-swinging pivot doors are also possible.

These are almost always framed-style doors, making them relatively easy for DIYers to install, but complicating cleaning chores.

Steam Doors

Best for: Airtight showers with steam features.

A steam shower door design is intended to be steam tight from floor to ceiling and along all seams, allowing a shower to double as a steam room. To contain steam, the glass panels extend from floor to ceiling of the shower enclosure.

The steam door design can be made of solid glass panels with a hinged door that has an air-tight seal built in. Usually, a steam shower enclosure has built-in movable panels above the door, called transoms, that can be used as vents.