Best everyday drinking glasses

Everyday glasses almost never break the way people imagine. They die in one of three mundane ways, and none of them has anything to do with how the glass looks on a shelf.

• A chipped rim. A small nick on the lip makes a glass unpleasant to drink from and eventually unsafe. The rim is the wear surface, and rim treatment is the single most useful thing to know about a glass you plan to use daily.
• Etching and cloudiness. Repeated hot cycles with hard water and aggressive detergent leave a permanent haze on softer glass. It is not limescale and it does not polish out. A glass specified for commercial dishwasher use is specified against exactly this.
• One hard knock. Against a faucet, a countertop edge or a tile floor. This is where tempering earns its money, because annealed soda-lime glass has no answer to it.

So the brief for an everyday glass is narrow: a rim that tolerates a dishwasher rack, glass that does not cloud, enough toughness to survive a knock, and a price per glass low enough that replacing one is not a decision. Shape is a long way down the list - which is exactly why a glass bought for a cocktail rarely makes a good everyday glass, and why the barware glasses sold as cocktail glassware are usually the wrong answer to this question.

These are selections on published specification, glass composition and construction rather than on test results of our own. In order of weight:

• Rim treatment. A laser-cut rim is sheared clean and left thin; a rolled rim is folded over to thicken it. The cut rim feels better and, counterintuitively, resists chipping better in a rack because there is no thickened bead to catch.
• Tempering. Fully tempered glass, as in the Duralex, or a partially tempered rim and foot, as in Libbey's foodservice specification, is the difference between a knock you forget and a knock that costs a glass.
• Replaceability. A glass you can buy one of in three years is worth more than a discontinued set of four. Open-stock lines from Libbey, Duralex and Schott Zwiesel all pass this; a supermarket own-brand set does not.
• Capacity against real ice. If you have upgraded your ice, a 9 oz tumbler is already the wrong glass. Twelve ounces is the floor.
• Storage. A stackable glass takes half the shelf. In a small kitchen that is a genuine criterion, not a footnote.
• Price per glass, not price per set. Six at a sensible price beats four at a nice one, because the set that survives is the set you are not precious about.

What we do not claim: we have not run these through a thousand dishwasher cycles, and nobody writing about glassware has. Our method, including what we deliberately do not assert, is on how we pick.

Most inexpensive glassware is annealed soda-lime glass - cooled slowly so the internal stresses relax. It is clear, cheap and entirely adequate, and it has no particular resistance to impact. When it fails it does so into long shards.

Tempering heats the glass and then chills the surfaces fast, putting the skin into compression and the core into tension. The result resists impact far better and, when it does finally go, breaks into small granular pieces rather than blades. Duralex publishes its tempered glass as 2.5 times stronger than regular glass and makes the Picardie at its own factory in France; the same process is why the range is rated for hot drinks as well as cold.

Libbey attacks the same problem at the rim rather than across the whole vessel. Its foodservice ClearFire lines are specified with a partially tempered HD2 rim and foot - the parts that actually fail - and sold as dishwasher safe for commercial use, with a guarantee on those components. The retail Signature and Bar Essentials sets are a different program with a different specification, so treat the rim technology as the reason Libbey is good at rims, not as a warranty on a boxed set.

Crystal is the third route and usually the wrong one for everyday use, because traditional lead or barium crystal is softer and clouds in a machine. Schott Zwiesel's Tritan formulation is titanium-reinforced specifically to survive repeated dishwasher cycles, which is what makes a crystal tumbler plausible as a daily glass rather than a special-occasion one. If you want the whole argument between pressed glass and crystal, Libbey vs Riedel goes through it properly.

Two sizes cover nearly everything a household drinks: one short glass around 12 oz and one tall glass between 12 and 17 oz. Everything else is a cocktail decision, not an everyday one.

On count: six of each size is the number that stops you washing up mid-evening, and it is why set-of-six pricing matters more than the last increment of quality at this end of the market. If you host rarely, four and four is honest. Buy the same line twice rather than two different ones - matching glasses look intentional and mismatched ones look like attrition, which is usually what they are.

If you want the tall glass sized properly rather than approximately, highball glass size guide covers what 12, 14 and 16 oz each do to the drink, and highball vs rocks glass settles which one a given drink wants.

This is the mismatch we see most often, and it happens in a predictable order: the glasses get bought first, the clear-ice mold arrives later, and then the cube does not fit the glass. A 2-inch cube in a 9 oz tumbler leaves almost no room for a pour, and a 60 mm sphere is worse.

Twelve ounces is the floor for a short glass if there is any chance of large ice in your future, which is why both short picks here are 12 oz rather than the 9 oz that supermarket sets default to. If you have already bought small glasses, that is a reasonable argument for a cube mold rather than a sphere mold - best clear ice molds covers the difference, and rocks glass size guide has the measurements.

If your household gets through a lot of chewable ice for long drinks, a machine rather than a mold is the purchase, and the everyday tall glass is where that ice ends up. Our Frigidaire EFIC255 review covers the no-app option in that category.

No glass on this page is without a real downside, and the downsides are the useful part of a shortlist:

• Libbey Modern Bar Essentials highball. At 5.5 in it is a short highball - a full ice column plus a 2 oz pour fills it with no headroom. The lip is thicker than crystal and you notice on a slow drink.
• Duralex Picardie. Bistro-plain by design, with a thick rolled rim you feel after drinking from anything finer. Short and wide rather than tall, so it is not a substitute for a proper highball.
• Libbey Signature Kentfield rocks. A plain cylinder; nothing about it is interesting to look at, and pressed glass does not ring.
• Libbey Hobstar cooler. The pressed cut pattern means a thicker wall and a heavier glass than the clarity suggests, and the facets hold residue if your dishwasher is tired.
• Schott Zwiesel Bar Special tumbler. Several times the price per glass of everything else here, which is a real decision on a glass that lives next to a sink. Buy two rather than six.

The pattern is worth stating plainly: at this end of the market you are choosing between a glass that feels better on the lip and a glass you will not mourn. For everyday use, not mourning it is usually the right call - and the glass that feels better is the one to buy in twos, for the drinks you are actually paying attention to.

A fair amount of broken glassware is specialist equipment being used as an everyday glass. Coupes and Nick and Nora glasses have a stem and a bowl shaped for a stirred drink, not for a dishwasher rack; a double-walled whisky glass is a careful-washing object with a gap between its walls where moisture sits; a decanter is furniture. None of them is fragile for want of quality - they are specified for a job that is not daily use.

The practical rule is to keep the cocktail glassware on a shelf and the everyday glasses in the cupboard by the sink. If you are still deciding which shapes you actually need, cocktail glassware types is the map, and best glassware sets for a home bar covers buying the lot in one go rather than piecemeal.

1. I want six glasses that do everything and I do not want to think about it. Libbey Modern Bar Essentials highball.
2. Glasses do not last in this house. Duralex Picardie - tempered, stackable, and the cheapest route to the end of the attrition.
3. I drink spirits on a big cube most evenings. Libbey Signature Kentfield 12 oz rocks.
4. I want the tall glass to look like something. Libbey Hobstar cooler.
5. I want one properly nice short glass that still goes in the machine. Schott Zwiesel Bar Special tumbler, bought in twos.

Whichever you pick, buy it as open stock from a line that will still exist next year, and buy the second set the same day you buy the first. A matched set of six you are not precious about is the quiet foundation of a working home bar - the rest of the shelf is covered in home bar ideas, and the cocktail-specific shapes are in best rocks glasses and best highball glasses.