Shower cubicle or walk-in enclosure: what suits your bathroom

How the three options actually differ

A closed shower cubicle is a self-contained unit: its own tray, usually acrylic or resin, with a frame holding sliding or folding glass doors. It arrives largely assembled and needs only plumbing and sealing to the wall. This is the option most people picture when they think «shower cubicle».

A walk-in enclosure uses fixed glass panels, often just one or two, fitted directly against tiled walls with a separate tray or a tiled shower area at floor level. There is no frame holding the whole thing together — each panel is fixed independently with brackets and silicone.

A screen over a tray is the simplest: a single glass panel, hinged or sliding, added to an existing bath or shower tray to stop water spreading. It does the least, and costs the least, but it is not a substitute for the other two where full enclosure is needed.

How much space and what kind of corner it needs

Closed cubicles need a dedicated footprint, typically from about 80 by 80 centimetres upwards, and enough clearance in front for the doors to open or slide without hitting a toilet or sink. In a small Tallinn bathroom — common in Soviet-era panel flats where the whole room can be under four square metres — this is often the tightest fit of the three.

Walk-in enclosures suit an existing corner or alcove better, since the panels follow the walls you already have rather than defining their own box. They work well where a bath has been removed and the floor has been built up with a fall towards a drain, which is common in renovated flats and in 1930s wooden houses in Kalamaja or Nõmme where the original bathroom was tiny.

A screen needs the least planning of all, since it sits on a tray or bath that is already there. It is the right choice when the bathroom layout is fixed and you are not moving plumbing, only containing splash.

Waterproofing and where the water actually goes

A cubicle's tray has its own upstand and seal, so waterproofing is largely built in; your job is sealing the tray to the wall and the frame to the tray, which is where leaks usually start if done badly. We offer silicone sealing from 45 € per job for exactly this kind of finishing work, including on existing enclosures where old silicone has gone black or pulled away.

A walk-in enclosure depends entirely on the waterproofing under the tiles — a proper waterproof membrane under the floor tiling and up the walls to shower height, not just grout and hope. This is where older buildings catch people out: a bathroom tiled decades ago rarely has a membrane, and adding a walk-in shower without one is asking for water to find the floor joists.

Whichever option you choose, the drain and fall of the floor matter more than the glass. A floor that doesn't fall correctly towards the drain will pool water regardless of how well the panels are sealed, and that is a tiling and substrate problem, not a silicone one.

Glass thickness and hinges: what's substance and what's marketing

Glass thickness for shower panels generally runs from 6 to 8 millimetres for framed cubicle doors, and 8 to 10 millimetres for frameless walk-in panels, which need the extra thickness to stay rigid without a frame holding them. Thinner glass on a frameless panel will flex and feel unstable even when it's technically safe.

Tempered safety glass is standard and not a feature worth paying extra for — it should be assumed, not marketed as an upgrade. What does make a genuine difference is the hinge and bracket hardware: solid metal hinges with a self-closing action hold their adjustment for years, while cheap plastic-bushed hinges sag and let doors swing open within a couple of seasons.

Coatings advertised as «easy-clean» or «anti-limescale» reduce how quickly limescale builds up but do not stop it, particularly with Tallinn's hard tap water. They are a genuine convenience, not a reason to pay significantly more, and they don't replace wiping the glass down.

• 6–8 mm glass is normal for framed cubicle doors
• 8–10 mm glass for frameless walk-in panels
• Tempered safety glass should be standard, not an upsell
• Metal hinges with self-closing action outlast plastic-bushed ones
• Easy-clean coatings help but don't remove the need to wipe glass down

Maintenance: what it means day to day

A closed cubicle has the most surfaces to keep clean: door tracks, the frame's corners, and the seal between tray and frame all collect grime and limescale, and sliding-door tracks in particular need periodic attention or they start sticking.

A walk-in enclosure is easier to wipe down since there's less frame and fewer tracks, but the silicone joint between glass and tiles is doing more work and needs closer watching — it's the only seal there, so once it degrades, water gets behind it quickly.

A screen is the easiest to maintain by far, since there's one panel and one seal. If low maintenance matters more to you than a fully enclosed shower, that alone can settle the choice.

What things cost, and where it pays to call someone in

Closed cubicles are usually the most expensive of the three once you include the tray, frame and installation, though prices vary widely by size and brand — get a fixed quote rather than relying on a shop's headline figure. Walk-in enclosures sit in the middle, since the glass and hardware cost less than a full cubicle but tiling and waterproofing the shower area adds to the total. A simple screen over an existing tray is the cheapest option by a clear margin.

Fitting any of the three yourself is possible if you're comfortable with a spirit level, a drill and silicone, but panels that aren't perfectly plumb leak, and trays that aren't level pool water in the corner. Our enclosure fitting starts from 150 € per job, and if the bathroom needs new tiling around a walk-in shower area, that's from 35 € per job.

Where it's genuinely worth calling in help is waterproofing under tiles in an older building, and anywhere the floor needs re-levelling for drainage — both are hard to fix after the fact without pulling tiles back up. Getting a fixed quote after sending photos or a rough sketch of the bathroom is the most reliable way to compare the real cost of each option before deciding.