When you're remodeling a bathroom after adding a few new members of the family, you need to consider the needs and behaviors of your children before investing a glass shower enclosure or door. It's perfectly possible to have multiple kids and still enjoy the beauty of a glass shower door, but you should take everything into consideration before deciding it's a good fit for your particular family. Consider these factors when deciding what kind of door to use for your shower remodel.
Potential for Injury
While there is a small potential for injury, most childhood injuries in the tub or shower occur from scalding water or a slip incident. Tubs and showers with curtains can be just as risky in this way. Injuries specific to glass doors tend to involve inappropriate use of the door by a child who is playing imaginatively and doesn't realize the danger they are in. If you can teach your children not to treat a glass shower door as a toy and to avoid slamming it or putting weight on it, it's no more dangerous than any other part of a shower or tub enclosure.
Bathing in Tub
Many people decide to add a tub to their shower enclosure when remodeling with kids in mind because showering with a toddler or baby is an awkward way to clean them. Tubs provide a fun and relaxing way to encourage children to bathe and develop good hygiene habits from an early age. However, you can have a tub and a glass shower door at the same time by choosing a model with a flexible and soft sealing flange around the lower half of the door. This allows you to fill the shower enclosure like a bathtub, especially if the top half of the door opens separately so you can lean over and bathe your child.
Age Consideration
In general, it gets safer to invest in glass shower doors as your children age. Toddlers and active young children are the groups most likely to have an accident involving a glass shower enclosure, so consider the ages of your family members when planning bathroom remodel. If there's no one under five and you don't plan to have any new additions in the next few years, you can likely teach everyone to use the shower properly and not to treat it as a toy.
Access Control
When there's someone in the family who just can't resist the allure of a glass shower door, you can also limit the use of these shower upgrades to the master bathroom and other areas that can be locked. Stick to shower curtains and other types of enclosures in the guest and family bathrooms, then keep the more delicate parts behind closed doors where the younger family members can only visit with permission and supervision.
Type of Door
The type of glass shower door you choose also determines the suitability of a particular model for use with children in the house. Frameless glass shower doors are beautiful and let you admire the tile work or natural stone of a luxurious shower enclosure, but they're also the most fragile and easiest to accidentally break by swinging them shut too quickly. Framed models are a little more old-fashioned, but the rolling or swinging mechanisms are better reinforced and put less stress on the glass itself.
No matter what style of glass shower door you choose, make sure it's made with tempered safety glass. This type of glass breaks into small pieces that create much smaller and less serious injuries if someone is in the shower or bathroom when the glass breaks. For more information, contact a company like Sound Glass Sales, Inc.
