How to Clean Shower Screens and Keep Them Clean

Posted on Wednesday, November 14th, 2018

Gone are the days when you’d have a plastic curtain on rings drawn across your shower. Today we have shower screens on runners and rails, or see-through glass doors that swing out. These glass screens and doors are better at keeping the water inside the shower recess, and they certainly are stylish. But they can be a chore to keep sparkling clean. So the question is, how to clean shower screens and what tips are there to help clean a glass shower screen?

Why Do Shower Screens Get So Dirty?

The trick to knowing how to clean shower screens made from glass is to understand glass, basically. While a glass shower screen may look and feel completely smooth, the truth is, glass is a rough and porous material. It is made from sand, heated to extremely high temperature, and it maintains qualities from the sand – uneven surface, porous and extremely hard. Things get trapped in the microscopic divets, the nooks and crannies. Moisture gets trapped by micro- particles of dirt, shampoo, soap chemicals and so on. If left for too long it gathers and sets hard. This is what gives your smooth glass that scummy look. And if left for too long, it can set real hard and become silicate-like, matching the basic compounds which make up the glass-sand, which is a silicate. So, a regular clean, and some preventative measures, will not only keep your shower screen clean it will also prevent some more permanent damage and dirt occurring.

How to Clean Shower Screens: Options

Home Recipes

Mixing your own cleaning solutions, including those to clean shower screens at home is a growing cottage industry. There is a lot of information online to make your own cleaning solutions, your own soaps, and more. And here are a couple of the more popular ones for you:

• 1 Cup White Vinegar
• 1 Cup Hot Water
• 1 Teaspoon Dishwashing liquid.

How to clean shower screens with this method:  just Put this into a spray bottle and spray on the shower screen surfaces. Let it sit for a few minutes and then apply a cleaning cloth, or old t-shirt, and some elbow grease. A good follow-up rinse may be required to remove the vinegar and dishwashing liquid, and the vinegar smell.

Alternative

• 1 cup fabric softener
• 1 litre warm-to-hot water.

Again, spray bottle, rags and elbow grease. One advantage of this method is the smell can be a little easier on the nose than vinegar but both work as a way to clean shower screens.

Off the supermarket shelf

There are many brand-name products available with instructions on how to clean shower screens and your bathroom and there’s not much difference between specific glass cleaning solution and the all-purpose cleaner when it comes to the cleaning the shower screen. But do not use the Tile Cleaner spray. The chemicals in those sprays are not designed for glass and can leave streaks and just add to the micro-particulates gathering in the glass, as mentioned above.

Once you’ve bought your branded cleaning product, spray on, let sit for a while, and then wipe away and rinse. Directions should be clearly labelled on the product. Alternatively, you can purchase items such as Magic Eraser Cloths. These are pre-treated with cleaning agents, and you just add elbow grease and wipe away on the glass. We would recommend combining the Magic Eraser with one of the solutions above, just to be sure.

Industrial solutions

This is how to clean shower screens as used by the professionals. These are what we here at My Home use. These products are effective and extremely good at cleaning your shower screens and bathrooms.

We always check with you regarding any allergies or potential reactions to any chemicals we use when cleaning shower screens and other areas of the home. However, saying that we make sure that our products are:

• Biodegradable.
• Non-hazardous
• Non-toxic
• Phosphate-free
• Chlorine free.

We want to know how to clean shower screens and keep the rest of your house clean, but we also want to ensure it is liveable and won’t have a negative impact on the environment.

Preventing Build-up of Scum

When you know how to clean shower screens with homemade products, or off-the-shelf, or whether you call in the experts at My Home to take care of your chores, you need to know how to keep them clean. Prevention is always better than cure, so, what are some ways you can implement a strategy to reduce or prevent the build-up of soap scum on your shower screens?

We have 3 main solutions:

Baby oil

1. Clean your shower screens with one of the above methods
2. Wipe over the screens with some baby oil
3. Use some steel wool to gently rub the oil into glass shower screens
4. Wipe away with a cloth which is slightly soaked in white vinegar
5. Buff your shower screens with a dry soft cloth
6. Rinse well

White Vinegar

1. Wipe white vinegar onto the shower screens with a cloth
2. Leave for a few minutes
3. Rinse thoroughly

Baking Soda

1. Wet your shower screens thoroughly.
2. Wipe the shower screens with a cloth which has baking soda upon it
3. A paste will form, this is meant to happen
4. Let the paste sit for a bit
5. Rinse off with warm water and wipe down

These methods on how to clean shower screens will help prevent the quick build-up of soap scum and dimness to your shower screens. Of course, even with the best preventative measures eventually the shower screens will need a clean again. If cleaning your bathroom, and especially paying particular attention to the shower screens, seems too much and you have better things to do with your time, you can trust My Home to clean for you and for a healthy, clean bathroom so call us on 13 22 31 for a quote, or email us by checking out the website and filling in the form at https://www.myhomeclean.com.au/contact-us/.