Curbless or low curb
A curbless shower has no step at the entry. The floor has to slope to the drain while the bathroom floor outside stays level, so the subfloor gets recessed or the bathroom floor built up. A low curb of a couple of inches is simpler to build and still easy to step over. We look at the floor framing before promising either.
Waterproofing comes first
Tile and grout are not waterproof. Behind them, every wet wall and the whole shower floor get a continuous waterproofing membrane that runs into the drain, plus a flood test before any tile goes down. Nobody sees it once the tile is up, but it decides whether the shower still works in fifteen years.
Large-format porcelain and a linear drain at the back wallDrains, niches and benches
A linear drain along one wall lets the floor slope one way, which works well with large tiles. A center drain needs the floor to slope from four sides, which suits small mosaic tile. A niche gets framed into the wall during rough-in, sized to the bottles you keep. A built-in bench gets waterproofed like the rest of the shower.
A niche framed and tiled at rough-in, not cut in laterGlass and hard water
The City of Nampa's 2025 water quality report puts city water anywhere from none up to 7.08 grains of hardness per gallon, and notes that hard water can leave residue on glass and plumbing fixtures. On a frameless glass panel that shows up as spots.
Fewer panels mean less glass to clean, so a single fixed panel often beats a door. Ask about a factory glass coating, keep a squeegee in the shower, and pick brushed fixture finishes, which hide water spots better than polished ones.
A squeegee after each shower keeps hard-water spots off the glassPrices
Custom-tiled walk-in shower
$3,500to$15,000
Installed
HomeGuide · checked Oct 2026 · national
Prefab shower stall kit
$1,000to$8,000
Installed
HomeGuide · checked Oct 2026 · national
Those figures come from HomeGuide's walk-in shower guide. We build custom-tiled showers, so plan around the first card. Curbless entries, large-format tile and frameless glass push a shower toward the top of the range.
