What is the best way to keep your glass shower door clean?

Streaky, water residue, finger printed glass is a shower door’s worst nightmare. While glass shower doors are arguably the focal point of any exquisite bathroom, maintaining their clean appearance can be an overwhelming and daunting task to embark upon.

Is there a magic technique or preventative measures one can take to avoid massive residual build up in the first place? Let’s first break down the reasons glass shower doors get dirty to begin with, then take a look at the solutions.

What Causes a Glass Shower Door to Get So Dirty?

The grime and soap scum that builds up on your glass shower walls is a direct product of the minerals in your shower water mixing with the chemical makeup of your soap. While this seems like a harmless mixture, the duo can have detrimental effects on the glass of your shower door.

Since glass is a porous material, this soap scum mixture can embed itself into the breathable crevices of your shower door thus resulting in glass corrosion over time. If you allow this type of damage to get out of control, cleaning your shower doors will be counter intuitive. In other words, you better get used to permanent residue adorning your shower door.

Heat, steam, increased humidity, and moisture also combine to form what is more commonly known as mildew. Soap scum and mildew are two completely different products of a shower, but both wreak havoc on the pristine cleanliness of your glass doors.

While the causes of shower door mildew and grime can be detrimental to the longevity of your glass shower door, the maintenance is less complex and relatively easy to implement on a shower to shower basis.

Tips and Tricks of the Glass Shower Door Cleaning Trade

Keeping your glass shower door clean and in excellent condition is not as hard as you may think. There are copious amounts of cleaners, products, and natural mixtures out there and available today. Let’s take a look at a few of the more common cleaning techniques and methods here below.

1. Invest in a squeegee: This tool can save you so much time in the long run. By squeegeeing the inside of your glass shower door after every shower, you essentially eliminate the water build up and drying inability of your shower. This is one of the simplest post-shower integrations you can do to maintain a clean glass door.
2. Mix water with vinegar: This is an inexpensive and eco-friendly shower cleaner that you can use daily without any unwarranted side effects to the glass. After every shower, spray the vinegar and water mixture liberally all over the shower door. Allow the mixture to sit for at least five minutes, rinse it clean with warm water and then towel dry the rest of the moisture off the glass.
3. Professional cleaners: These cleaners have tendency to be more chemically dense, so use sparingly and with caution. You should not have to use these types of cleaners daily, just ensure to thoroughly read the directions when cleaning with commercial cleaners.
4. Leave the door wide open: I know this sounds lazy and counter intuitive but leaving the door open allows for proper air flow and for the moisture to dry more efficiently. When your shower door can properly dry, the process of compounding mildew is essentially removed from the equation. You can leave your door open in conjunction with any of the other cleaning techniques above to double the cleaning effects.
5. Vinegar plus baking soda: Try this if the water and vinegar mixture doesn’t work. What you want to do here is to apply more baking soda to the vinegar to form a thick paste. Apply the mixture to the glass shower door and allow for it to sit for 15 minutes. Wipe the mixture off as completely as possible and then rinse the remainder off with water. Do NOT forget to dry the glass after you complete the entire process – otherwise you will allow for streaking and possible mildew to settle back in.

Again, there are many different techniques to both maintaining and cleaning a glass shower door. Try a few of the tips mentioned above to find what works best for you. Maintaining the appearance of the glass in your bathroom is imperative to the overall aesthetics. If you can find a routine that you can stick with, the possibility of you needing to invest anything extra in the maintenance of your glass shower doors decreases exponentially over time.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about your glass shower doors in Salt Lake City, please feel free to reach out to us HERE today! We look forward to working with you.