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half cleaned shower door with the other half translucent with hard water stains
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How to Clean Glass Shower Doors

Learning How to Remove Hard Water Stains from Glass Shower Doors is possible! A few simple steps, tools and a whole lots of elbow grease is all it takes to get your glass shower doors looking like new in no time!
Prep Time10 minutes
Active Time1 hour
vinegar "soak"30 minutes
Total Time1 hour 40 minutes
Author: Jessica Randhawa

Materials

Instructions

  • Gather supplies.
    tools and equipment needed to clean a glass shower door
  • The vinegar soak. Depending on how bad your buildup is, you may or may not need to do this step. Mine was looking pretty miserable, so I decided to soak a sheet in white vinegar and drape it over my shower door. I then pressed as much of the sheet against the glass as possible so that the glass could “soak” in vinegar. If the sheet started to dry out, I would spray with additional vinegar. 
    Shower with hard water stains being treated
  • Rinse. After approximately 30 minutes (just enough time to clean the rest of the bathroom!), remove the sheet (or relocate to a different part of the shower), and rinse with water.
    Thick hard water build-up on a glass shower door
  • Prepare the Bar Keepers Friend paste. Put on the mask (if you have one) and gloves (if you don’t have some, buy some). To a bowl or cup add approximately 1/4 cup of powdered Bar Keepers Friend. There is no need to measure an exact amount, this is just to give you an idea of where to start. Slowly add water until a paste forms, mixing well.
    A woman standing in front of a glass shower door spreading chemicals for cleaning hard water build up
  • Scrub. Use your hand to rub the paste over a section of the glass shower door, and, using a 0000 Super Fine Steel Wool pad, start scrubbing. Small circular motion, large circular motion, up and down, just scrub. Once you feel you’ve been scrubbing for far too long and surely you must have shiny clean spotless doors, rinse. For some, this may be the case after one application. For others, you may need to scrub one more time.
    bar keepers friend being applied to shower door covered in hard water stains
  • Rinse well. And remember to use a glass cleaner to clean the other side of the glass shower door.
    Glass shower door half cleaned, half not cleaned, with cleaned side transparent and not cleaned side translucent

Notes

In order to remove those ingrained mineral deposits stuck to your shower doors, you will have to use some serious elbow grease. This is not a gentle once over and done type fix. My advice is to work in sections and ask your husband or stronger significant other to help if you get tired. Please, do not be discouraged if you still have some hard water spots after the first round of scrubbing. For those really tough spots, you may need to go over it a couple times.
Is Barkeepers Friend Septic-safe? Yes.