One of the biggest choices consumers must make when trying to select from the great number of shower doors on the market is which style to choose. The two basic styles, being hinged and folding, can help to narrow the potential selection, however, within each of those two categories lies additional subsets. Folding shower doors, for instance, have two basic styles they are offered in, bi-fold and accordion, each with its own unique look and set of qualities.
What Are Folding Shower Doors?
Most bathtubs are built with a shower feature as well, offering the bather two types of bathing methods. While shower curtains are the cheapest way to create a partition between the shower area and the bathroom when using the shower, some consumer prefer something a little more durable and permanent. Because of this, shower doors are often used which attach to the wall of the tub and mount into a frame installed just below the ceiling. While some doors slide on a track, others fold in on themselves. Folding shower were doors are most commonly found in two varieties that incorporate either one large fold or several smaller folds.
What Types Of Folding Shower Doors Are Available?
Bi-fold doors essentially fold in half onto themselves. The door is attached to the mounting track at both far ends of the door, and the center portion of the door is hinged which allows it to fold. By folding in half, the shower door takes up much less space than it would if it were an out swing door. Bi-fold doors can be made of glass or plexiglass, offering the consumer a wide range of design options to choose from. Glass doors can be transparent or opaque, smooth or textured, and plain or patterned. Bi-fold doors tend to be the most common styles used in bathrooms that are not necessarily limited to space constraints, as they tend to be the more elegant of the two types of folding door designs.
Accordion doors, on the other hand, contain several folds within their structure. Since glass and plexiglass tend to be somewhat rigid in design, accordion doors are often made of more flexible materials that can better accommodate the numerous folds. Accordion doors are preferred in bathrooms with limited square footage since they require very little additional clearance space outside of the shower are in order to be able to open and close properly.
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