“Step-free” is the most casually used phrase in accessible bathrooms — applied to low-profile trays with a lip you still have to step over, to doors with a bottom channel you still have to clear, to entries that are step-free in the brochure and a small climb in person. A genuinely step-free walk-in entry has a precise meaning: the floor runs from the bathroom into the shower on one level, with nothing at floor level to cross — and that is achieved in the floor construction and the drainage, long before the glass arrives. The glass has a real part to play: a fixed screen is the only shower format with literally nothing in the entry at floor level. But it is one part of an accessible design that also includes falls, a drain in the right place, an entry wide enough to use, and room to turn. This page works through each honestly — what each involves, the typical planning figures, and what to check before anyone promises you “step-free”. Our shower screens page covers the screens themselves; our shower glass installation page covers how glass is measured and fitted. This page is about the entry.
At a glance
- Step-free means level, not low. A slim tray lip, a door’s bottom channel or a raised threshold is a step, however small the brochure makes it sound. True level entry is one floor, running through.
- The floor does the work: falls formed in the floor build-up carry the water away, so the entry itself can stay flat and flush.
- The drain guards the line: a drain at or near the entry line is what stops shower water migrating out across the level floor you just created.
- Width and turning are planned, not hoped for: the entry gap and the clear space inside are sized for the person and any chair or aid they use — typical planning figures are given below, framed as practice, not standards.
- The glass is never a grab point. A fixed panel is a screen, not a support. Support belongs on structure — walls and rails fitted to them — planned alongside the glass, never hung off it.
What “step-free” must actually mean
Test any claimed step-free entry against one question: is there anything at floor level, anywhere between the bathroom floor and the shower head, that a wheel, a foot or a walking frame has to ride over? If yes, it is not step-free — it is low-step, which is a different and lesser thing, worth having only if you choose it knowingly.
Work through the usual impostors. A low-profile shower tray still has an edge — a few centimetres of upstand, precisely where a wheel catches. A hinged door needs a bottom seal and usually a small threshold profile to close against — a ridge at exactly the crossing point. A sliding door runs over a bottom track or guide — a permanent ridge in the floor line. Each is a reasonable choice for many households; none of them is level entry.
What remains, when every floor-level obstruction is removed, is the fixed screen: one panel of glass, with the entry simply the open end of the shower area. Nothing crosses the floor line because there is nothing to cross it with — no door to seal, no track to guide it. That is why the walk-in screen is the natural glass for an accessible shower, and also why the glass is the easy part of the job. The hard parts follow: a floor that drains without a tray to catch the water, and an entry sized for the person using it.
One more honesty point: step-free describes the entry. An accessible shower is more than its entry — controls’ reach, head position, seating, support — and this article covers the entry and the glass. Treat any design that discusses only the entry as unfinished.
Floor build-up and falls
A tray exists to do two jobs: catch the water and slope it to a drain. Remove the tray, and both jobs move into the floor itself. The floor under a level-entry shower is built up in layers — waterproofing, and a formed slope (the “fall”) that runs the shower area’s floor gently down toward the drain — then tiled over, so the finished surface reads as one continuous floor from the bathroom through the shower, falling only within the shower zone and arriving at the entry line exactly flush with the bathroom floor outside.
The falls involved are gentle — in trade practice, gradients in the region of 1:40 to 1:50 across the shower floor are commonly worked to: steep enough for water to travel reliably, shallow enough that a chair does not roll. Those figures are typical practice, not a promise about your floor — the right fall depends on the room’s size, the drain’s position and the tile format, and is set by whoever builds the floor. What matters is the sequence and the implication:
- The floor is construction, and it comes first. Falls, waterproofing and drainage are built before tiles, and tiles before glass. A step-free entry cannot be retrofitted by a glass installer onto a floor that was built for a tray — if the existing bathroom has a raised floor or a tray, achieving true level entry means floor works, and that scope should be understood and priced as building work, separate from the glass.
- The entry line is where the fall stops. Inside the shower, the floor falls; at the entry, it must be level with the room. The transition is designed, not accidental — a floor that keeps falling past the entry takes the water with it, out into the room.
- The glass is measured to the finished floor. A fixed screen stands on the completed tiles, so the screen’s measurement happens after the floor is built — the sequence our installation work always follows, and the reason a step-free project is planned as floor first, glass last.
If a builder proposes a level entry by simply omitting the tray on a flat floor, be suspicious: without formed falls, the water has no instructions, and a flat shower floor pools — the least accessible outcome of all.
Drainage at the entry line
On a level floor, the drain is the border guard. With no tray edge and no threshold, the only thing deciding whether shower water stays in the shower zone is where the floor sends it — and the most defensive arrangement is a drain at or near the entry line itself: typically a long, narrow channel drain (a linear grate) running across the shower at the line where the screen’s open end sits, catching the water that travels toward the opening and returning it before it crosses. The grate sits flush with the tiles — it is walked and wheeled over as part of the floor, and a well-set one presents no ridge of its own.
The alternatives are a drain positioned deep inside the shower zone with falls arranged so all water runs inward — workable where the shower area is long, since the falls have distance to work with — or, weakest, a drain placed by plumbing convenience with falls asked to fight the room’s geometry. On a step-free entry, drain position is not a detail: it is the difference between a dry bathroom floor and a daily wet one, and a wet exit floor is worse than an inconvenience in an accessible bathroom — it undoes the safety the level entry was built for.
Two practical notes. First, the screen and the drain work as one system — the panel covers the spray zone, the drain line covers the floor water — so plan them together, not wherever each trade happened to leave them. Second, capacity: an accessible shower is often used seated, with the head running longer and closer to the floor; the drain and its falls must clear water at the rate the shower delivers it. Put that to the floor builder in terms — “show me how the water leaves” — before tiles go down and the answer becomes expensive to change.
Entry width and turning
A step-free entry that is too narrow is a corridor to nowhere, so the opening is planned around the person, not around the panel catalogue. The thinking runs in two parts: the entry gap — the open width the bather passes through — and the clear space inside, where they position themselves, turn, or are assisted.
Typical planning practice, offered as exactly that: an accessible entry gap is commonly planned noticeably wider than a standard walk-in’s gap (general walk-in planning works around gaps of roughly 500–650mm) — in the region of 800mm or more of clear opening, so a chair passes without knuckles meeting glass or wall. Inside, a wheelchair user needs room to turn or at least to position and transfer: a clear turning circle in the region of 1,500mm across is the figure commonly planned around. Treat both numbers as starting points for a conversation about a specific person — their chair’s width, whether they transfer to a shower seat, whether a carer stands inside with them — not as standards this page asserts, because bodies and chairs vary more than bathrooms do, and the measurement visit is where the figures meet the person.
The glass interacts with the width in two ways. First, panel and gap are the same total: every millimetre given to the entry is taken from the panel, and a panel shortened for a wide entry covers less of the spray zone — one reason accessible walk-ins are usually planned into generous shower areas rather than squeezed into standard ones. Second, a seated bather with a handheld head throws spray lower and wider than a standing bather under a fixed head, so the screen’s length and the drain line earn their keep precisely in this format. Neither is a reason to narrow the entry; both are reasons the whole layout — panel, gap, head position, drain — is planned together, on the room’s real dimensions.
Grab points and glass safety
This is the section where honesty matters most, because it is about what hands reach for when a floor is wet.
The glass is never a grab point. A fixed shower screen is a sheet of toughened glass held by fixings sized for the panel’s own weight and the knocks of ordinary use. It is not a support rail, it is not rated to take a falling person’s load through a hand at its edge, and nobody should be told — or allowed to assume — that they can haul themselves up by it. Screen edges are also where a steadying hand naturally lands, which is why the accessible layout plans real support where the hand will go, rather than leaving the glass as the only thing in reach.
Real support is fixed to structure. Grab rails belong on walls — screwed into the wall’s structure or into reinforcement built into the wall during construction — positioned where the bather actually moves: beside the entry, at the transfer point, within the shower zone at seated and standing heights. A rail is only as strong as what it is fixed to, so hollow or lightly built walls may need reinforcement planned in during the build. Whether rails, a fold-down seat or other fittings form part of a particular project depends on the trades involved and the household’s needs — this page deliberately does not promise who supplies or fits them; settle that explicitly with your builder and glass installer at planning, not on fitting day. If you have professional advice (an occupational therapist’s input is genuinely valuable here), bring it to the measurement — the glass layout accommodates planned rail positions far more easily than it can be reworked around rails fitted afterwards.
The glass itself is the safe kind, specified properly. Shower screens are toughened safety glass — our standard work is 10mm — which, if it ever fails, breaks into small fragments rather than long shards. Two details deserve attention at specification: the panel must be rigid and its fixings sound, because a panel that flexes invites exactly the leaning it must not receive; and the panel’s position should never place its vertical edge as the first thing an entering person meets at hand height, with no support nearby. Both are layout points, settled at measurement — with the user, or their carer, talking through how the shower is actually used, not from a dimensioned drawing alone.
Frequently asked questions
Is a low-profile tray the same as a step-free entry?
No. A low-profile tray still has an upstand — a rim of a few centimetres that feet step over and wheels bump against. It is a smaller step, honestly sold by some and mis-sold by others, but step-free means level: one floor running through, with the falls formed inside the shower zone and the entry itself flush.
Can my existing tray shower be converted to a step-free walk-in?
The glass part is straightforward — tray out, fixed screen in — but the honest scope is the floor: level entry needs formed falls, drainage and usually renewed waterproofing built in, which is building work before any glass is measured. Whether your floor’s construction allows it at sensible cost is a survey question; expect the answer to be about the floor, not the screen.
How wide should the entry be for a wheelchair?
There is no single figure this page will assert as a standard, because chairs and users differ. As typical planning practice, accessible entries are commonly planned around 800mm or more of clear opening, with clear turning space in the region of 1,500mm across inside the shower — then adjusted to the actual chair, the transfer method and whether a carer assists. Bring those details to the measurement and the layout is planned around the person, not the catalogue.
Can I hold the glass panel to steady myself?
No — and plan the bathroom so nobody has to. A fixed screen is not a grab point and is not built to take a person’s weight through a hand. Support belongs on grab rails fixed to the wall’s structure, placed at the entry and transfer points. If the only thing in reach at the entry is the panel’s edge, the layout needs a rail there — raise it at planning, not after a scare.
Does a step-free walk-in leak more than other showers?
It manages water differently: there is no tray or threshold as a last line of defence, so the containment is the screen covering the spray, the falls sending floor water inward, and — in the most defensive layout — a channel drain at the entry line catching what travels toward the opening. Done as a system, the bathroom floor stays dry. Done as “tray removed, screen added”, it will not — the floor works are not optional garnish on this format.
Do you fit grab rails and shower seats as well as the glass?
The glass — screens, and the layout planning around them — is our work. Rails, seats and the floor build-up are planned alongside it and may sit with your builder or other trades depending on the project; what we will do is plan the glass with those fittings’ positions in mind, and tell you plainly at the survey stage what sits with whom, so nothing is assumed. Ask us on WhatsApp with your situation and we will be straight about the division of work before anything is booked.
Talk to us about your step-free entry
If you are planning a step-free walk-in — for yourself, a parent, or a bathroom being built to last — message us on WhatsApp on 052 443 2655 with a photo of the bathroom or the shower area, rough sizes, and who the shower needs to work for. We will talk through the entry, the floor and drainage questions to put to your builder, and the screen layout that suits them — in that order, because that is the order the work happens in.
This guide is part of our Shower Screens & Fixed/Walk-in Glass series. Next: Fixed Panel Replacement: Matching New Glass to an Existing Bathroom →
