The Telltale Sign You Should Stop Cleaning Your Shower Glass And Replace It

There's a lot to love about glass shower doors. Unlike opaque curtains that can visually shrink the size of your bathroom, shower glass provides a sleek and sophisticated look that makes even the tiniest spaces look brighter and more spacious. Although you can't just toss them in the washing machine, there are a lot of easy ways to clean glass shower doors like using essential oils or even dryer sheets! But over time, even if you use commercial spray cleaners, you may start to notice that your shower glass still looks dirty. It can be confounding to still see a cloudy, film-like appearance, especially when you've scrubbed it to death and the glass feels slick and smooth to the touch. What you're seeing is known in the professional glass and cleaning worlds as "glass cancer." It's a phenomenon where your shower glass starts to deteriorate and form a web of extremely fine cracks, a telltale sign it's time to stop cleaning and start picking out a replacement.

Although "glass cancer" is the term you're most likely to see on TikTok, it's really a colloquial phrase used to describe a variety of glass deterioration problems that are carefully studied by historians, scientists, and even doctors. Your optometrist is more likely to call the fuzzy spiderwebbing on your spectacles "crazing," while an antiques dealer evaluating your prized collection of vintage vases will probably use the word "crizzling." Cracking, misting, foxing, and spalling are other ways to describe "glass diseases," a range of problems that present with all kinds of glass, including shower doors, as a result of chemical leaching, temperature fluctuations, or long exposure to moist conditions.

Especially if you're after that luxury aesthetic, the possibility of glass cancer is one of the serious downsides to custom glass shower doors you'll wish you considered before installing them. Even if you're careful about not using harsh chemicals that can etch the outside of the glass, the doors will still occasionally be bumped and knocked into, especially on those mornings when you're in a hurry. On super hot days when you need a cold shower, or frigid evenings when you hop in for a long hot soak, glass doors will be exposed to sudden temperature fluctuations. And no shower door is immune from soap scum buildup that occasionally needs to be vigorously cleaned. At first, these conditions will create barely noticeable cracks. But over time, as the web of cracks join together, your shower glass door will become permanently cloudy.

Unfortunately, once your shower door has glass cancer, there's no way to fix it. To get that crystal clear look again, you'll need to purchase and install a replacement. According to Angi, the average cost for a new shower door is close to $1,000. The investment may be well worth it, considering that door alignment issues and broken seals that lead to leaks are additional problems you'll face with older shower glass doors. But if a brand new shower door doesn't fit into your budget, you're sick of all the squeegeeing, or you don't want to deal with the cycle of glass cancer over and over again, opt for shower curtains with snap-in liners for virtually hassle-free cleaning instead.