The gaps are deliberate. A frameless door hangs on hinges with no jamb or track around it, so the glass needs clearance to swing without striking tile or another panel. Hardware is engineered around a specific opening, and the seals, the sweep, the curb and the floor slope manage water in place of a sealed perimeter.
Look at where the spaces sit and the logic appears. On the hinge side, hardware needs room to open through its arc without the glass edge sweeping into tile. At the strike, door and fixed panel need clearance to pass each other, and a clear vinyl seal spans that space and steers water back inside. Along the bottom, a small lift lets the door clear an uneven floor and lets air move so the enclosure dries between uses. Each of those spaces is measured, not accidental, and the hardware maker specifies it. Manufacturers publish those clearances for a reason: hardware set outside them binds, drifts out of alignment, or loads a hinge in a direction the glass was never built to take.
Here is the real source of the question. Frameless enclosures are designed to contain water, not to seal a room. Framed doors earn their reputation for tightness from the metal channel wrapped around them, which is the same channel that traps soap, grows mildew in the corners and gives those doors their dated look. Frameless trades that perimeter for open glass and moves water control somewhere smarter: the pitch of the shower floor, the placement of the head, the sweep, the seals and a curb sloped back into the pan.
Used normally, that system keeps water where it belongs. Aim a handheld wand straight at the opening and it will not, and no enclosure short of a sealed steam room would.
Spaces should be small, consistent and even from top to bottom. One that tapers, one you can see daylight through from across the room, or a strike side noticeably wider than the hinge side usually means the opening runs out of plumb and glass was cut to nominal dimensions instead of to the real wall. Water escaping from one particular spot every single shower is another tell. Both are measuring problems, and both explain why we take dimensions off finished tile ourselves and fabricate in house rather than ordering a panel to a number somebody read off a tape once.
Not the ones around the door. Silicone belongs at fixed panel joints and where glass meets tile, run on the dry side so it sheds water instead of trapping it. Sealing a door gap glues the door shut, blocks the airflow that dries an enclosure, and fights hardware built to move. If water escapes there, the seal or the sweep is the part to change.
A little, and that is the same airflow drying your glass afterward. People notice it more in a large open walk-in than in an enclosed stall. If a draft bothers you, the answers are layout ones: a taller panel, a return panel at the opening, or relocating the head so spray never lands near the clearance. A sealed steam enclosure is the fully closed option.
Uneven spacing and stray water usually trace back to how an opening was measured. Our own crew hangs every enclosure this shop cuts and edges, so there is one number to call when something is not sitting right. Reach the Lodi shop at (201) 460-1313.
