A grid enclosure is clear toughened glass with slim matte black bars laid across it, so the panel reads as a set of window panes. People often call it the Crittall style, after the old English steel windows it copies. The glass is one full sheet. The bars are bonded onto it, not glazed between separate panes, so there is nothing for water to get into. It is the strongest look we build, and the most work. Prices start at ₹1,730 per sq ft.
How the grid is actually made
The look copies a steel window, where small panes really are glazed into a metal frame. We do not build it that way, and no shower should be.
A real glazed grid in a bathroom would have dozens of joints, every one of them a place for water to sit and for the seal to fail.
So we start with one full sheet of toughened glass, exactly as in any other enclosure. Then we bond flat matte black bars onto the face of it in the grid pattern. The bars are about 20mm wide and a few millimetres thick.
We bond bars to both faces, front and back, in the same positions. A grid on one side only looks right from the room and wrong from inside the shower, where you can see the bar has no depth. Doing both faces is most of why this build costs what it does.
Setting out, and why it takes a day
The grid has to be set out before anything is bonded, and the setting out is the job.
Every line must be level, every upright plumb, and the spacing has to be the same across the door and the fixed panel, so the pattern carries across the joint. Where the enclosure turns a corner, the horizontal lines must meet at the same height on both sides.
We mark the whole thing out, check it, and only then start bonding. There is no adjusting afterwards. A bar bonded 5mm out of line cannot be moved without damaging the glass surface.
That is about 58 running feet of bar on a normal 5 by 7 foot enclosure, cut, mitred at the crossings and set by hand. It is a full day's careful work on top of the ordinary fitting.
Living with it, and cleaning it
Two honest points before you choose it.
The bars break the glass up visually, so a small bathroom feels smaller than it does with plain glass. This enclosure wants a room with some space around it.
And every bar has two edges where it meets the glass, so there is more to wipe than on a plain panel. Squeegee the glass as normal, then run a cloth along the bars now and then. If you leave it, hard water leaves a line along the bottom edge of each horizontal bar, and that line is visible against black.
What you get for that is a look nothing else does. It is the enclosure people photograph, and it is the one we are most often asked for after somebody has seen one.
What decides the price
₹1,730 per sq ft is the starting rate. A normal 35 sq ft enclosure comes to about ₹60,500 before GST.
The glass is ordinary clear toughened glass, the same as our ₹850 enclosure. Nearly all the difference is the grid: about 58 running feet of black bar for both faces, the slim black frame around the outside, black hinges and handle, and a full extra day on site to set it all out.
So the price follows the number of bars, not the area of glass. A grid of large squares costs less than a grid of small ones on the same panel. Tell us at the visit how fine you want the pattern, and we will price two options.
And if the number is more than you want to spend, a black frame with no grid gives you a lot of the same feeling at ₹1,235 per sq ft.
