Why is my shower door leaking?
Find a shower door leak by where the water shows up: the bottom sweep, the hinge side, the track or the corners. What you can fix and what needs a repair.
Start with where the water appears
A shower door leak almost always shows up in one place, and that place points to the part that has failed. Close the door, run the shower the way you normally do, and watch the outside of the enclosure for a few minutes with the bathroom light on. Note exactly where the first water appears.
| Where the water is | Most likely cause |
|---|---|
| Along the bottom of a hinged door | Worn or missing bottom sweep |
| Down the hinge side of the door | Missing or perished jamb seal, or the door gap is too wide |
| Down the handle side | Door hanging out of alignment, or a worn strike seal |
| Over the bottom track of a slider | Blocked weep holes holding water in the track |
| At a bottom corner of a fixed panel | Failed silicone where the glass meets the curb or wall |
| On the ceiling below, or under the floor | Probably not the door — see below |
The common causes, one by one
The bottom sweep
The flexible vinyl strip along the bottom of a hinged door deflects water back into the shower. It hardens, cracks and tears with age, and cleaning products speed that up. A sweep that no longer touches the curb, or has a split in it, is the single most common cause of water on the bathroom floor. It is also the cheapest fix: sweeps are a slide-on part.
Seals down the sides
A frameless door has a deliberate gap between the glass and the wall or fixed panel, so it can swing without catching. Clear vinyl seals close most of that gap. When they perish or slip off, water sprayed at the door finds the gap. If the gap looks wider than it used to, the door may have dropped on its hinges.
A door out of alignment
Hinge screws work loose over time, and a heavy glass door slowly sags. A door that has dropped no longer closes squarely against its seals, and usually leaks on the handle side first. Look along the top edge of the door against the fixed panel or the wall: if the gap is wider at one end than the other, the door has moved. Re-aligning it is a repair, not a replacement.
A blocked track on a sliding door
The bottom track of a slider is designed to hold a little water and drain it back into the shower through small weep holes. When soap scum and minerals block those holes, the track fills and spills over the outside edge. Clear the holes with a pipe cleaner or a thin brush and the leak often stops.
Failed silicone
Silicone seals the joints where fixed glass meets the curb and the walls. It peels, splits and grows mould with age. Look for gaps or lifting at the bottom corners. One caution: do not run fresh silicone over the inside of a sliding door's track, or over its weep holes. Those are meant to drain, and sealing them traps water.
The shower head and the floor
Some leaks are not a fault in the door at all. A shower head aimed straight at the door, or a hand shower left pointing at the gap, will find its way out of any enclosure. And if the shower floor slopes toward the door instead of the drain, water pools at the threshold. That is a tiling problem rather than a glass one.
When it is not the door
Water stains on the ceiling below, loose tiles, or a soft floor outside the shower are a different problem. They usually mean water is getting behind the tile or through the shower pan — failed grout, a cracked pan or a plumbing leak inside the wall. A glass company cannot fix those, and a new door will not stop them. Call a plumber or a tile contractor first.
What you can fix, and what needs a visit
- Usually yourself: clearing weep holes, re-seating a seal that has slipped, aiming the shower head away from the door.
- Usually a repair visit: replacing sweeps and seals that have to match your glass thickness, re-aligning a sagging door, tightening or replacing hinges, and cutting out and re-running failed silicone.
- Sometimes a replacement: when the hardware is obsolete and seals for it are no longer made, or several things are failing at once on an old enclosure.
See shower door repair for what we fix and how we decide between repair and replacement.