Turn Your Shower into a Spa Retreat

Unlike your bathtub, typically used for only the occasional soak, your shower gets a workout every day. So, both designers and consumers are looking to intensify the daily shower experience with innovations such as steam showers, chromatherapy and multiple showerheads that can massage you like a soft summer rain or a Swedish masseuse on steroids. Here's an array of innovations that will make you never want to leave your shower.

How you enter it is the first thing to consider. A frameless glass door is one new option, where the glass seems to float without support. Tempered safety glass in either 3/8- or 1/2-inch thickness gives an airy, open feeling to the space — great for a small shower. For a larger space, you can dispense with a door entirely. Put a curved tile wall or an L-shaped glass tile space that won't fence you in but will contain the water. Clarke's Iridess shower has a curved acrylic wall in four glowing colors, pearl, sea spray, azure and orchid, with 16 color choices for the floor. Another new shower enclosure material is metal — Frigo Design does them in either their exclusive fingerprint-free stainless steel or copper with a non-tarnishing sealer. Tell them your shower system and dimensions, and they'll fabricate it to your specifications.