Soap scum happens. Minerals left behind by your water combine with your bathroom products, skin oils, and dirt to form an unpleasant film on your glass shower doors.
Hard water worsens the problem because it contains more minerals. Soap scum can more easily latch onto mineral deposits as compared to perfectly clean glass. Preventing soap scum on your glass shower doors requires thorough cleaning followed by efforts to prevent minerals and scum from sticking.
Here’s how you can prevent soap scum on glass shower doors by changing your regular habits:
- Change your bath soap and hair products. Most importantly, bathrooms with soap scum problems should not have bar soap. Switch to a bath gel and consider changing out any other products to see if it makes a difference.
- Squeegee after use. Following every shower, or as frequently as possible, wipe down or squeegee the glass shower doors. This small moment of easy prevention can help you avoid tough cleaning down the road.
- Install a water softener or filtered shower head. Remove minerals from your shower water to prevent the deposits that make soap scum worse.
When it’s time to fully clean your glass shower doors you can also take steps to prevent future build up. Here are cleaning tips to make the soap scum stay away longer:
- After cleaning, wipe the glass down with lemon oil or a product containing carnauba wax. These will make it harder for scum to attach to the glass.
- You can also use Rain-X, which is intended to repel water from car windshields so naturally it can also prevent water from sticking to glass shower doors.
Be sure to avoid abrasive cleaners and sponges to protect your glass from scratches. You should also avoid bleach cleaners which are highly alkaline, not acidic.
Remember that the real secret to clean glass shower doors is prevention. It might take a bit of effort to do the major cleaning, but then you can prevent the problem from coming back so quickly.