Note: This article was written in collaboration between BIMsmith and HMI Glass, an American manufacturer of custom glass shower enclosures and specialty glass for residential and commercial projects.
Every shower enclosure is a negotiation with the building. The glass has to meet a window, step around a bench and land cleanly against tile. How the panels line up and the door opens decides whether those details read as one composition or a series of interruptions. Then comes the second negotiation, with everything between the drawing and the bathroom: field measurements, submittals, fabrication and a delivery schedule. Those details are what make a shower specification succeed, and a manufacturer who understands them can take much of the weight off the specifier.
HMI Glass advises a "shower first" approach: a way of working that settles the enclosure before the tile, the vanity, and the lighting start to narrow the choices. Founded in 1946, the American-made manufacturer builds custom and standard shower enclosures, along with specialty glass. Its Multi-Unit division takes that thinking to hospitality and multifamily projects. Working through glaziers, the team brings design-assist and specification support to the table early, while the drawing is still easy to keep intact.
The following case studies show how that plays out, each starting from a different idea about what a bathroom should be.
1 Hotel Austin
1 Hotels builds its identity on sustainability, material quality and a modern aesthetic, and the brief for the Austin shower doors was to match all three. The hotel occupies the lower floors of Waterline, now the tallest building in Texas at 1,025 feet, so the doors also had to uphold the integrity of a globally recognized hospitality brand in one of the most visible builds in the state.
The designer’s idea for the doors was heavy frameless glass with a defined edge. To deliver it, HMI Glass supplied Frameless Series swing shower doors with U-channel trim around the exposed glass edges, finished with contemporary matte black hardware across the hotel’s more than 250 guestrooms. It is a small adaptation with a visible payoff: the glass keeps its openness, and the edges and hardware give each panel a clear, graphic line.
Image Credit: Lincoln Property
The difficulty was variety. The hotel has multiple room types with variable layouts, and in custom frameless work every layout carries its own glass dimensions and hardware locations. Each one called for precision fabrication and detailed submittal coordination before anything went into production. Custom glass is cut to the opening as built rather than as drawn, so the schedule left no room for late deliveries.
Image Credit: Lincoln Property
Dolly Parton's SongTeller Hotel
Dolly Parton called SongTeller Hotel "my love letter to the city," and the building makes good on that down to the bath glass. It was one of the last major projects she worked on before her death in August. Pivot Studio converted an office building at 211 Commerce Street in Nashville into a 12-story, 245-room hotel for Herschend Family Entertainment, operated by The Dollywood Company.
The brief for the shower glass was specific. The hotel's guitar-headstock mark had to carry into the guest bath as part of the glass itself, not as a film, decal or applied vinyl.
Image Credit: SongTeller Hotel
HMI printed both programs with InGlass ceramic frit on 3/8-inch clear tempered glass. The ink fuses into the glass during tempering, which is why the mark will not peel or fade and why nothing sits on the surface to lift at an edge. Clear glass keeps the bath open, and the print carries the hotel's identity into the room.
The privacy pattern solves the opposite problem. A toilet room needs a screen, and a full-coverage print does that without turning the bath into a dark box. That balance between privacy and light is the design decision in these enclosures.
Image Credit: SongTeller Hotel
The production challenge was consistency. Two print programs, branded and privacy, had to hold identical color and opacity across four room collections: Signature, Acoustic, Six Sisters and the SongTeller Suite. The enclosures are code-compliant, tempered and printed in HMI's U.S. facilities, with SGCC certification to ANSI Z97.1 and CPSC 16 CFR 1201 Category II, the federal category for shower doors and enclosures, and they are specified under CSI 10 28 19.
Gun Lake Casino Resort
At Gun Lake Casino Resort in Wayland, Michigan, the design leans on nature. HBG Design handled architecture and interiors for the new hotel tower around an organic, nature-inspired narrative, warm in palette and material. The tower holds 252 guestrooms and suites, from standard rooms to the Chairman's Suite and the two-story Ogema Suite.
The shower brief followed from that story: custom frameless enclosures that complemented the architect's design narrative while elevating the bath. The doors are Frameless Series, finished with premium brushed nickel hardware that sits quietly against the warm interiors.
Image Credit: Gun Lake Casino
Supplying enclosures across a mix of accommodations, from guestrooms to the Ogema Suite, took manufacturing expertise, careful coordination and the flexibility to support both the design intent and the construction timeline. The goal was visual consistency throughout the tower, so a guest in a standard room and a guest in a suite would meet the same shower language.
JW Marriott Reston Station
The first JW Marriott in Virginia is a hotel and 94 branded condominiums in one building, and the design ambition was a modern luxury that carried across both. The architect was Nunzio Marc DeSantis Architects, with interiors by Michael Graves.
A hotel bathroom and a condominium bathroom answer to different users. One is used by a steady stream of guests, the other is lived in by its owner, and each has its own expectations of the glass. At Reston Station the two programs came with distinct project teams, specifications, timelines and enclosure types, all advancing concurrently. Keeping them looking like one design took disciplined coordination and precise execution, so construction momentum did not stall.
Image Credit: Marriott International
HMI managed the two programs as a structured dual-track approach, built on proactive communication with each project team. Fabrication was kept in step with the schedule on both tracks, so each program received its glass when it was ready for it.
Image Credit: Marriott International
Barry P. Gossett Basketball Performance Center
At the University of Maryland's Barry P. Gossett Basketball Performance Center in College Park, the shower enclosures had to be durable, contract-grade and still look modern, for elite athletes using them every day. Gensler served as design consultant on the center, which serves both the men's and women's basketball programs.
Image Credit: UM Terps
Locker room showers face heavy daily use, constant moisture and repeated cleaning, and privacy still counts. HMI specified satin frosted glass for the enclosures, which screens the space while letting light through, with heavy-duty construction and matte black hardware. C.10 glass protection adds durability and easier cleaning, so the finish on the glass is part of the specification rather than an afterthought.
Beyond the Frame
Put the shower first, and the rest of the bathroom has something to respond to. Across these five projects, from the tallest building in Texas to a college locker room, that sequence held, and so did the details that follow from it: the hardware finish, the print, the privacy glass, the way the doors were delivered to the build.
To explore HMI Glass products in more detail, visit https://hmiglass.com. Hospitality and multi-unit projects are supported through HMI Multi-Unit at https://hmimultiunit.com. You can download HMI Glass Revit families on BIMsmith Market.
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