Types of Frosted Glass for Interior and Pantry Doors

What type of frosted glass is right for your project?

Are you wondering what the difference is? The obscurity level.

Which one is right for you? Well that depends. You have to think about the necessary amount of privacy and the spacing available behind the door as well as the backlighting. A window directly opposite a door vs a windowless room can make the same project look quite different. We have to think about the overall goals: Decoration, privacy, obscurity.

Acid Etched Frosted Glass

This type of door glass has been the industry standard for years. It has lower obscurity level from the enameled glass but has advantages that the designs applied have more detail.

Not all door openings need the highest obscurity level. Office doors, for example are perfect applications. Many pantry doors, laundry room doors, Master bathroom, closets, etc tend to favor acid etched.

On this type glass the design is etched on the outer side (Non factory etched side) of the door. This is why it is so important to communicate the swing and handing when ordering the door. So far, everyone has accomplished this flawlessly!

Enameled Glass

This is the highest privacy type frosted glass available. The technique to use this door glass is the opposite to using acid etched glass.

Enameled glass is more obscure than the acid etched. The downside is the design detail. This method the area with the design is either enameled or frosted, no in between. So it is more single stage as opposed to shading technique used on acid etched glass. You have to weigh the goal of the project with the limitation of each type of glass.

If you need to hide something or someone close, say pantry shelves just less than 8 ” away, use the enameled. You don’t want to see a shape of shelves behind the door. A body shape, well, how close will a person be to the door and is the person backlight with lighting or windows? With enameled the bulk of the glass area will be enameled and the design will be simpler and fully etched in the etched areas.

Below are some examples of enameled glass where the goal is not to be able to detect items behind the door at all.