Is Ella Shower Door Glass Tempered, and Is It Low-Iron or Standard Clear?

Yes. Every Ella glass shower door and screen is made of tempered safety glass, including every Primo door, even where a product listing does not spell it out. The glass is standard clear glass, not low-iron, so it reads as clear when you look straight at the panel but can show a faint green tint along exposed edges, especially against white acrylic. The full list of doors and screens with their published sizes is in Glass Door and Screen Options Beyond the 4-Fold: Sliding Doors, the Tidy Screen, the LayDown Bi-Fold and the Primo Door, and this page answers only the glass question so you can plan the look and the fit.

Tempered, on Every Door and Screen

Tempered safety glass is published for the four-fold walk-in tub screen, the Duo framed slider and the Primo thick-glass sliders, and the same holds for the Tidy screens and the LayDown bi-fold. Some Primo listings describe the panel only by its thickness, which is why shoppers ask whether the frameless door is tempered. It is. What differs between the doors is not the type of glass but its thickness and how it is held:

• Four-fold shower screen: 1/8 inch tempered clear glass in an ionized aluminum chrome frame with PVC geared hinges.
• Duo 55 by 70 framed sliding door: two panels of clear tempered glass about 1/4 inch thick in a chrome, brushed nickel or black frame.
• Primo thick-glass slider, 48 by 78 and 60 by 78 inches: the installation document describes 5/16 inch glass, frameless, with no bottom rail.
• Primo standard-glass slider, 60 by 72 inches: thickness not listed.

Standard Clear, Not Low-Iron: What the Green Edge Means

Ella's door and screen glass is ordinary clear glass. Low-iron glass is not a published option on any Ella shower door or screen. In daily use the difference is small: looking straight through, the panel looks clear. Where an edge is exposed, such as the open edge of a frameless Primo or the top edge of a screen panel, you may notice a faint green cast, and it shows most against the white acrylic of a stall or tub. Most people do not notice it at all. If an edge-to-edge colorless look is essential to your bathroom design, raise it with your Ella dealer or the team at (800) 480-6850 before you settle on a door, the same way you would ask about frosted glass. No frosted shower door is published either; frosted tempered glass in the Ella lineup appears on the inward-swing walk-in tub door, as Do Ella glass shower doors come in frosted glass or non-chrome frame finishes? explains.

Glass by Door and Screen

The differences come down to weight and feel rather than clarity. The thin four-fold screen is light enough to fold accordion style at the wall, the Duo's framed quarter-inch panels ride in a track, and the Primo's 5/16 inch panel is heavy enough to hang frameless with no bottom rail, only a water retainer gasket that expands about 3/8 of an inch, as described in Does the Ella Shower Door Have a Bottom Track or Is It Trackless?. Whichever you choose, the tint at the edge is the same ordinary clear glass, and none of the published listings describes a low-iron, tinted or patterned version.

Because It Is Tempered, It Cannot Be Cut: Order the Size That Fits

Tempered glass cannot be cut or drilled after it is made, so a door that is too wide cannot be trimmed on site and a panel cannot be drilled for extra hardware. That is why the published adjustment ranges matter more than they would for a framed window. The Primo installation manual gives the wall-to-wall adjustment as 46.02 to 48 inches for the 48 inch door and 58.03 to 60 inches for the 60 inch door, both 78 inches high, and the Tidy screen adjusts from 38.19 to 39 inches. Measure the finished opening at the width where the door will sit before you order, and if it falls outside those ranges, ask the team which door fits rather than planning to cut. The four-fold walk-in tub screen is the one piece that can be resized, not by cutting the glass but by removing a panel: the video on this page shows the third panel being released by removing its screws and plastic retainer inserts, then the outer panel reconnected to the middle one, turning the four-fold into a three-fold screen 32 inches wide for a 52 inch tub in a 60 inch alcove. The LayDown bi-fold is handed, and because each hand is stocked separately, confirm availability for your drain side first, as covered in Folding Glass Shower Screen: Which Side It Mounts On, How Much Room It Takes Folded, and Confirming Stock.

Tempered Glass on Walk-In Tub Doors Too

The tub doors use tempered glass as well, held in different frames by family. The Capri's outward-swinging door is a plastic composite frame with tempered glass on a 3-latch gear and shaft mechanism, while the Elite's inward-swinging door is a stainless steel frame with tempered glass that lifts out for cleaning, a contrast laid out in Ella Capri Versus Ella Elite: Threshold, Seat Height, Door Width, Handle Location and Door Swing. The inward-swing tub door carries a frosted tempered glass panel, which is the only frosted glass published anywhere in the lineup. So when you see a frosted panel in an Ella photo, it is a tub door, not a shower door, and the shower doors and screens stay clear tempered glass throughout.

Watch: Ella's Bubbles: Three Fold Shower Screen Assembly with chapters and a full transcript.

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