Glass Railings That Disappear Into the View

Yes. A glass guard still has to meet the same 36-inch minimum height at open-sided walking surfaces under the 2021 Washington State Residential Code (R312.1.2), and 34 inches on the open sides of stairs. The 4-inch sphere rule (R312.1.3) is effectively moot on a frameless panel because there is no opening to pass a sphere through. The glass itself is tempered or laminated safety glass, and the steel hardware that carries it is fabricated in our own shop.

Frameless uses a continuous base shoe or discreet point fittings with no top rail, so the glass is the guard and the sightline is completely uninterrupted. Semi-frameless runs a slim steel top rail and posts, which costs less, tolerates more movement in the substrate, and reads as a lighter version of a steel railing. Frameless is the cleaner look and the more demanding install, which is exactly where scanning first pays off.

Glass sits at the premium end of what we build, above steel picket and cable. Most of our projects overall run $5,000 to $15,000 installed, and glass runs are toward the upper half of that. Panel size, whether it is frameless or semi-frameless, and the hardware finish move the number the most. Send photos or plans and we will come back with a rough number, usually within one business day.

4 to 8 weeks from deposit to install. Glass is cut to the dimensions from our 3D scan, so the panels are ordered against a measured space rather than a hand measurement, which is what keeps a frameless job from needing a second set of panels.

Plain glass cleaner and a microfiber cloth. In the Northwest the thing that actually shows is hard-water spotting from sprinklers and rain runoff, so we place the base detail to shed water rather than pool it, and we can specify a coated glass that resists spotting if the rail is somewhere exposed.