What do you mean by "a 48-inch shower?" I assume not 48 square, since that's a huge shower with no possible elbow room problem. We put in a shower that is about 48x32. We went with glass doors, not a curtain, but I can say that at 32 inches there is still no elbow room problem.

I am in Sweden dealing with an old tension rod that only pulls apart. It won't shorten. Thanks to these posts I pulled everything apart and sent the rod with the spring down the tube and it worked. The curtains are up in the kitchen now! Thank you everyone!

I got the YNL shower curtain rod recommended above from Amazon (thank you @Sarah Pecor!) and found these shower curtain hooks in brass that match pretty well from Parachute. They have a nice weight to them and when I walk in the room to me it all matches. They don’t stand out and don’t look super yellow which is what I’ve been trying to avoid. I find that brass looks different in different lighting and also different in person vs in pictures. To me it’s close enough and I’m happy with the closeness to my delta trinsic champagne brass hardware. I held up a towel rod for a color comparison. https://www.parachutehome.com/products/shower-curtain-hooks?options=color_brass

Oh boy!! I am going to have that rod put right down on those Swanstone walls asap. So glad for your info. Thanks so much! What a help you were. I am 100% wheelchair dependent and really was fretting about how to remedy this. A couple of years ago when I had the bathroom rehab done, I had frameless shower doors installed. Was ok for a while because I could get into the shower without transferring....just holding onto shower bars and such. My condition progressed until I could only access shower by transferring from wheelchair and the sliding glass doors did not give me enough room to safely transfer in and out, so I had doors taken out and went to the shower curtains. Works much better!