How to Start a Shower Door Installation Business

How do you start a shower door installation business step by step?

Register the business, buy suction cups and tile drilling gear, bind liability insurance, learn to template an out of plumb opening, then win your first jobs through tile setters and remodelers.

The order matters here more than in most trades. You are not learning to clean something or hang something. You are learning to measure a room that is never square, order a custom panel that cannot be corrected, and carry 100 pounds of glass across wet tile without dropping it. Every one of those skills gets learned on your own bathroom, not on a paying customer.

The other thing to sort out early is your glass source. You do not stock glass. You send a cut sheet with hole and notch locations to a local shop or a regional tempering fabricator, and they cut, drill, edge polish, then temper. Walk in and introduce yourself before you need them, because your lead time and your reorder mercy both depend on that relationship.

• Set up the legal side. LLC or sole proprietorship, EIN, business bank account, and a call to your state contractor board plus your city registration desk.
• Find your fabricator. Visit two or three local glass shops, ask for their cut sheet format, their tolerance policy and their lead time. Three to five business days is a fast shop advertising it as a selling point, not the norm.
• Open a hardware account with C.R. Laurence, US Horizon or Frameless Hardware Company. CRL is the catalog the trade speaks in, and the SD21 frameless catalog is the reference document.
• Buy the core kit: two vacuum cup lifters, a variable speed drill, diamond bits and a diamond core for porcelain, a rotary hammer for the masonry behind the tile, a green beam laser, shims and structural silicone.
• Bind general liability before you touch a customer's tile. A solo installer runs roughly $900 to $1,400 a year.
• Practice on three real openings you own or can borrow. Measure at three heights, order the glass, install it, and time yourself. A single frameless door should be a two to four hour job.
• Write the price list first. Framed, semi frameless, frameless single door, full enclosure and repair are five different prices, not one.
• Book the first job through the referral channel. Tile setters, bath remodelers and plumbers finish the room right before you do, and they already have the customer's phone number.

How much does it cost to start a shower door installation business?

A one van, install only start runs about $2,300 to $4,000 in tools, insurance and setup. Franchises in this trade start at $80,000 to $100,000 because they buy a showroom and a territory.

No source publishes a solo shower door startup total, so build it from the parts. Two Wood's Powr-Grip N4950 cup lifters at $95 each is $190. A factory reconditioned Bosch GBH2-28L rotary hammer is $159.99 against $279 new. A reconditioned Bosch GLL3-330CG green beam laser is $322.99 against a $579 list price. That is $673 of hard tools. Add $300 to $600 of cordless drill, hand tools and diamond bits, $150 to $300 of sealant and anchors, $900 to $1,400 of first year liability insurance, and $300 to $1,000 of licensing and entity setup, and you land between $2,323 and $3,973. Call it $2,300 to $4,000, plus $500 to $1,500 if you want a real first marketing push.

Compare that to buying in. The Original Frameless Shower Doors franchise asks $35,000 in liquid capital, an $80,000 to $100,000 total investment, a $50,000 franchise fee and 6% to 8% royalty. Gatsby Glass runs $198,000 to $251,000 total with an 8.5% royalty on gross. Those are showroom and territory businesses. They are not a proxy for one person with a truck and a set of cups, which is why the gap looks absurd.

Where do you actually buy shower glass and hardware?

Glass comes from a local shop or regional tempering fabricator that cuts and drills before tempering. Hardware comes from CRL, US Horizon or Frameless Hardware Company. Nothing gets modified after it leaves the oven.

Understand the sequence and the rest of this trade makes sense. Annealed glass is cut, drilled, notched and edge polished, and only then does it go through the tempering oven. After that it is finished forever. Grind a hole an eighth of an inch off and the panel is scrap. That single fact is why templating gets its own visit, why fabricators want a cut sheet and not a phone call, and why the trade tolerates lead times a handyman would find absurd.

Spec the glass properly on the order. Frameless doors use three eighths inch or one half inch tempered glass. At those thicknesses the green cast of standard clear glass is obvious, which is what sells low iron glass at roughly $10 to $15 more per square foot, or 15% to 25% over clear. Protective coatings like ShowerGuard, Diamon-Fusion and EnduroShield add around 30% to the door cost, roughly $500 on a coated door.

Know the code you are selling against. IBC section 2406.4.5 makes glazing in a shower enclosure a hazardous location whenever the bottom exposed edge sits less than 60 inches above a standing surface, so it must be safety glazing. Federally, CPSC 16 CFR Part 1201 has covered shower doors and enclosures since July 6, 1977, and shower enclosures are Category II: a 400 foot pound impact at a 48 inch drop height, versus 150 foot pounds for Category I.

Do you need a license to install shower doors?

Usually yes, once the job crosses your state's dollar threshold. California requires a license at $1,000 or more, North Carolina at $40,000, and Florida leaves shower doors to county rules. Liability insurance runs about $900 to $1,400 a year.

There is no national license for shower door installation, and the trade classification you fall under is glazing. In California that is the CSLB C-17 Glazing Contractor license. In Florida the Glass and Glazing Specialty Contractor scope names assembly and installation of shower and tub enclosures outright. Everywhere else you are reading a dollar threshold and a county code page.

The threshold is the number that decides everything for a startup. California dropped the exemption line to $1,000 on January 1, 2025 under AB 2622, and the exemption only holds if all three are true: the job is under $1,000, no building permit of any kind is pulled, and you have no hired help. Unlicensed contracting there is a misdemeanor under B and P Code section 7028, up to six months in jail and fines to $5,000 on a first offense. Since a typical frameless job bills $1,200 to $2,000, a California installer is licensed or illegal. There is no middle.

Read the experience requirement before you plan around a license, because in the strict states it is the real gate, not the fee. California will not issue a C-17 without four years of journey level experience, plus a business and law exam, a trade exam, fingerprinting, a $25,000 license bond and proof of workers comp or a signed exemption. If you have never worked in glass, that is a four year runway, and the usual answer is to work for a glass shop while you build it, or to start in a state with no statewide license and keep every job under the threshold until you qualify.

Certification is separate and optional. The National Glass Association runs MyGlassClass.com, with 100 plus courses including frameless shower enclosure design, hardware and installation, free to NGA member companies for every employee. The NGA Glazier Apprentice Curriculum supports a US Department of Labor approved apprenticeship and earns a joint NGA and NCCER credential at journeyman competency. Neither replaces a license, and both are worth more to a customer than a logo.

• General liability for a solo installer: roughly $900 to $1,400 a year. Broker whole of glazing quotes reach $1,500 to $5,000, but those include crews and commercial height work.
• Workers compensation class code is NCCI 5462, Glazier, Away From Shop and Drivers. One published group rate is $9.10 per $100 of payroll, which is one state and group, not a national number.
• Sole proprietors with no employees are exempt from workers comp in many states but not all. California specifically requires proof of coverage or an exemption to issue the contractor license.
• Verify every fee against the state board before you budget it. License fee lists online drift, and the boards are the only authority.

What should you charge to install a shower door?

Framed doors install for $400 to $1,100 and standard frameless for $1,200 to $2,000, with custom frameless enclosures reaching $3,300. Repairs run $120 to $350 and fill the gaps between installs.

Price by door type and glass thickness, never by the hour. Homeowners see $50 to $100 an hour quoted online and will do the math against a two hour install, which is a losing conversation. Quote the finished job.

Here is the arithmetic on a real ticket. Sarah quotes a 30 inch by 76 inch frameless door in three eighths inch tempered, hung off the tiled wall with no fixed panel. That is 15.8 square feet, about 77 pounds of glass. At the $25 per square foot retail benchmark the glass alone is $395. Two CRL wall mount hinges street around $45 each, so $90. A handle, a bottom sweep and a strike jamb she budgets at $200, because CRL gates trade pricing on small parts behind a login and you only learn your real number by opening an account. A cartridge of DOWSIL 795 is under $15. Materials land near $700 on a $1,400 ticket, which is the frameless average, so the other $700 has to cover the template visit, the glass pickup, three hours on site, insurance, the truck and her profit. Whether that $700 is healthy or thin depends entirely on what her fabricator charges on a trade account, which is why the account matters more than the marketing.

Repairs are the cash flow filler nobody plans for and everybody needs. A shower door repair averages $290 in a $120 to $350 band, most finish in 20 to 90 minutes, and a single replacement tempered panel is $250 to $700 or more. Three repairs in an afternoon can out earn one install, and they come from customers who later buy an enclosure.

• Take a deposit that covers the glass at the template visit, not on install day. Once the fabricator starts a custom panel the order cannot be cancelled and the panel fits no other opening in the world.
• Upsell low iron glass on anything three eighths inch or thicker. The green edge cast is visible at that thickness, and low iron adds $10 to $15 per square foot, or 15% to 25% over clear.
• Upsell a protective coating. ShowerGuard, Diamon-Fusion and EnduroShield add roughly 30% to the door cost, around $500 on a coated door, and they cut the callbacks about hard water.
• Do not quote semi frameless off a frameless price. It sits between framed and frameless, and no published range defends a number, so price it from your own material takeoff.
• Charge for the template visit or build it into the price, but never give away two trips for one job's money.

How do you measure a shower opening and move the glass safely?

Measure the finished tile at three heights. A quarter inch of variance over six feet is normal. A 30 by 76 inch door in half inch glass weighs about 103 pounds, so lift it with two people.

Templating exists because bathrooms are not square. You measure finished surfaces, meaning tile, backerboard and grout joints already in place, at the top, the middle and the bottom of the opening, and you take the tightest number. A quarter inch to a half inch of variance over six feet is completely normal in a real house. Within an eighth of an inch over 72 inches suits a stock configuration. An eighth to a quarter usually shims out. Past a quarter inch you are into custom, and past three eighths across the jamb you are planning shims, packers, a filler strip along the full wall, or a semi frameless design that hides the gap in a frame.

Then there is the weight, which is where solo operators get hurt. Three eighths inch tempered runs about 4.9 pounds per square foot and half inch about 6.5. A 30 by 76 inch door is 15.8 square feet, so roughly 77 pounds in three eighths and 103 pounds in half inch. A single Powr-Grip N4950 is rated to 125 pounds, so the cup can technically hold it. That does not mean you carry it alone across a wet tile floor, up a stair turn, past a vanity corner. Two people, two cups each on a heavy panel, every time.

The hardware sets your ceiling, not the glass. A CRL Vienna 180 glass to glass pair holds 110 pounds to a 36 inch maximum width on three eighths to half inch glass, and a third hinge takes it to 140 pounds. Plymouth glass to glass on two hinges holds 140 pounds to 39 inches. Madrid caps at 36 inches and 120 pounds. Light duty half round hinges stop at 24 inches and 50 pounds. Wall mount hinges carry their own separate ratings, so read the spec sheet for the exact part number you are ordering, not the series name, and do it before the glass is cut rather than after it arrives.

• Measure width and height at three points each, top, middle, bottom, and note which way the wall leans.
• Leave an eighth to a quarter inch of tolerance per side for shim and sealant, and a one eighth to three sixteenths inch gap where seal strips land.
• Photograph every wall, the threshold slope, the tile pattern and any niche before you leave. You will need it when the fabricator asks.
• Bed anchors or fasteners in silicone before insertion so water cannot migrate into the substrate. 8 mm plastic anchors are standard in tile and masonry.
• Turn the hammer function off when drilling porcelain. Percussion transmits shock through the tile and cracks it. Rotary mode, diamond bit, variable speed, keep it wet, start at 45 degrees to make a pilot dimple, tape to stop bit walk.
• Never lever or force a panel into an opening that is out of plumb, and never overtighten a clamp. Edge chips and point loading are the two things you do on site that make a panel let go months later.
• Do not run a continuous bead of silicone that traps water inside the enclosure. Seal so anything that gets behind a channel can weep back into the pan, then tell the customer in writing to leave the shower dry for 24 hours while it cures.

What tools and equipment do you need to install shower doors?

Two vacuum cup lifters, a variable speed drill with diamond bits, a rotary hammer for the masonry behind tile, a green beam laser and structural silicone. Budget about $1,000 reconditioned or $1,650 new.

Buy cups in pairs, not singles. A two person lift on a heavy panel means two cups per person, and most vendors throw in a protective case when you buy two.

The tool that does the most work is the plain variable speed drill, not the rotary hammer. Diamond bits and a diamond core go in the drill and cut the tile, wet and slow. The rotary hammer only comes out once you are through the glaze and into concrete or block behind it, and it never touches porcelain. A kit sold as a shower door kit that leads with the rotary hammer was written by somebody who has not drilled tile.

Buy the hammer and the laser factory reconditioned on day one. The reconditioned Bosch GBH2-28L saves $119 against the $279 new price and the reconditioned GLL3-330CG saves $256 against the $579 list, and that $375 covers three to five months of your liability premium. Two cups at $190, both power tools reconditioned at $483 and a $300 hand tool set is about $1,000 to be job ready, against roughly $1,650 buying the same list new.

How do you get your first shower door customers?

Glass is the last trade in the bathroom, so tile setters, plumbers and bath remodelers control the handoff. Court them first, then build a Google Business Profile on finished install photos.

The structural argument for the referral channel is simple. Glass goes in last. Whoever tiled that shower decides who measures it, and if their walls are out of plumb, it becomes your problem, which means they need an installer who will not embarrass them. That relationship is worth more than any ad, and it is why franchise systems in this trade sell lead generation and a call center as their core value. Lead flow is the binding constraint, and you are buying it with relationships instead of a $50,000 franchise fee.

Run the math on a real push. Split $300 three ways: about $80 for 1,000 double sided cards with three finished install photos on the back, about $180 for four CRL hinge and handle samples at the roughly $45 street price to leave with the shops you most want, and about $40 of fuel for a morning driving to twenty tile setters, bath remodelers and plumbers in your county. If three of them send you one job apiece over the next two months at the $1,400 frameless average, that $300 returned $4,200 in revenue and roughly $2,100 after materials. The point is not the first month. Those three are in a new bathroom most months, so the same $300 keeps paying in year two, which no ad spend does.

Then let the photos do the rest. Shoot every finished install straight on with the light behind you, load twenty of them onto a Google Business Profile, and ask for the review before you carry the cups back to the truck. Homeowners searching frameless shower door near me are picking from photos and star counts, and a glass job photographs better than almost anything else in the trades.

• Tile setters and bath remodelers first. They set the opening you have to fit, and they finish days before the glass goes in.
• Plumbers and general contractors second. They are in the bathroom already and get asked about the door constantly.
• Interior designers and cabinet shops third. They spec finishes, and hinge finish is a finish decision.
• Repair calls are the cheapest lead you will ever get. A $290 repair puts you inside a house that has an aging enclosure and a homeowner who now trusts you.
• Real estate photos and staging. Cloudy old framed doors are the single ugliest thing in a listing bathroom, and agents know it.
• Carry hardware samples. A CRL hinge and a handle in the customer's hand closes better than a catalog page, because finish is what people actually decide on.

What should the first 90 days of a shower door business look like?

Weeks one and two are registration, insurance, accounts and tools. Weeks three to six are three at cost practice installs, repair calls and reviews. Weeks seven to twelve build the contractor referral channel.

Watch the cash, not the calendar. You are $2,300 to $4,000 out of pocket before job one, and three practice installs priced at cost return your materials and nothing else. The first real money is repair work, at $120 to $350 a call on 20 to 90 minutes of labor, which is why you take every repair that rings in weeks three to six even though installs pay better per visit. By day 90 the target is two installs a week at a $1,300 average, which is $2,600 of gross a week and roughly $1,300 after glass and hardware.

What mistakes kill new shower door installation businesses?

The killers are mismeasuring a panel you cannot recut, running the hammer function into porcelain, lifting heavy glass alone, and quoting a frameless job before you check the hinge weight rating.

Price the mismeasure honestly, because it is the one mistake that ends businesses. A wrong panel is a full replacement at $250 to $700 or more, a reorder that starts at three to five business days, a return trip, and a customer who now tells people about you. Take the $1,400 door from the pricing section: buying that $395 panel a second time plus the trip back takes more than half of the $700 that was supposed to pay you for the whole job, and a bigger panel takes all of it. Two of those in a month and the month is gone. This is why you measure at three heights, photograph everything, and read the cut sheet back to the fabricator before it goes to the oven.

• Treating tempered glass like it can be adjusted on site. It cannot be cut, drilled or notched after tempering, and a custom panel cannot be repurposed for another opening or cancelled once production starts.
• Measuring rough framing instead of finished tile. Backerboard, tile thickness and grout joints all change the finished opening.
• Using the hammer function on porcelain. Percussion cracks tile, and a cracked shower wall is a tile bill you now own.
• Carrying a heavy panel solo because a single cup is rated for it. A 103 pound half inch door on wet tile is a two person lift, and the ER visit costs more than the helper.
• Ordering before checking the hinge rating. Light duty half round hinges stop at 24 inches and 50 pounds. A Vienna glass to glass pair is 110 pounds and 36 inches. The hardware caps the door, not your ambition.
• Hanging a hinged door so it can only swing inward. It has to be able to open outward, because a person who slips inside the enclosure can otherwise block the only way in.
• Taking the job on a handshake. Get the customer to sign off on the measurements, the glass spec, the hardware finish and a deposit before the panel is cut, because a custom panel cannot be cancelled once production starts and it fits no other opening. Without that signature a measurement argument is your word against theirs.
• Working without general liability insurance. You are drilling into other people's finished tile and carrying glass through their house. At roughly $900 to $1,400 a year, going bare is not a savings.
• Ignoring the code. Shower enclosures need safety glazing under IBC 2406.4.5 and CPSC 16 CFR 1201 Category II, at 400 foot pounds and a 48 inch drop height. A cheap non compliant panel is a lawsuit.
• Never mentioning spontaneous breakage. Nickel sulfide inclusions occur in roughly 1 in 4,000 to 1 in 6,000 tempered panels and can shatter a door years later with no impact. CPSC linked shattering shower doors to an estimated 2,300 emergency room visits between 2012 and 2016. Explain it up front and offer heat soaked or tempered laminated glass. Explaining it after is an argument.
• Bidding above the license threshold. In California a job of $1,000 or more needs a license, which is nearly every frameless job you will quote.
• Quoting one price for framed and frameless. Framed installs at $400 to $1,100 and custom frameless at $1,400 to $3,300. Quoting fast on the phone is how you land a frameless job at a framed price.

Is a shower door installation business worth it?

Yes, if you can sell past the framed door price. A solo installer doing two jobs a week at $1,300 grosses around $104,000, and materials take roughly half of that.

No credible source publishes revenue for a solo shower door installer, so build the model instead of trusting a number. A single frameless door is a two to four hour appointment, so one install is the normal scheduling unit and two is arithmetically possible on a light day. At two jobs a week for 40 working weeks at a $1,300 average ticket, that is $104,000 gross. Materials at roughly half, priced off the retail glass benchmark, leaves about $52,000, and a real trade account is the single thing that moves that line. Then insurance at $900 to $1,400, fuel, the truck and marketing come out. A realistic first year owner take is $35,000 to $50,000, which beats the $55,440 median wage for glaziers only once you add the third job per week. That is the honest bar.

The ceiling looks different with a crew and a lead engine. The Gatsby Glass franchise disclosure reports yearly gross sales of $883,693 with estimated earnings of $123,718 to $159,065, though that is across only eight franchisees who operated a full 2024 calendar year, in multi employee territories with a call center behind them. Its predecessor corporate location did $3.27 million. Those are not solo numbers, but they show where the road goes if you hire.

The demand is real and slow growing rather than exploding. The US frameless shower door market was about $1.2 billion in 2024 and $1.3 billion in 2025, tracking toward $1.7 billion by 2033 at roughly 4% a year, with frameless holding the larger share and expected to keep it. Glazier employment overall is projected up 3% from 2024 to 2034 across 60,500 jobs. Nobody is getting rich on category growth. You get paid for being the installer who measures correctly.

Plan the year around the season. Demand troughs in January and February, ramps through March, peaks April through July when bathroom remodel bookings are highest, gets a second bump September through November ahead of the holidays, then drops in December. Winter weather is irrelevant to an indoor job, so the slowdown is demand side. Fill it with repairs, book maintenance and re-caulk work, and buy your tools when contractors are discounting after the holidays.