Like toaster ovens and super-strength blenders, the floor-length mirror is often grouped into the camp of necessary decor evils—unsightly, yet far too functional to do away with completely. While floor mirrors have made strides on the design front, it can still be a struggle to acquiesce a 48” x 12” plot of wall space to what essentially equates to an empty frame. To help you make your peace, we’ve collected some of designers’ smartest strategies for integrating floor-length mirrors. These tricks will make floor-length mirrors look like an intentional style element in any room, from the living room to the bedroom and beyond.
Living Room
When it comes to the living room floor mirrors, forgo anything flimsy or encased in a less-than-stellar metal. Floor mirrors in the living room should pack a bit of heft. Whether that be a massive double-wide floor length mirror or a wall-to-wall mirror is totally up to you.
Wall-to-Wall Mirror
If the idea of employing a wall-to-wall mirror in the living room is giving you intense 80s flashbacks, consider exercising a designer detail: incised gridlines. Gridlines will impart architectural finesse and keep any Dirty Dancing connotations at bay. If you remain skeptical, consider that furniture designers have used incised cuts to modernize mirrored furniture in recent years. If your home is more traditional, you might also consider building a frame around a wall-to-wall living room mirror or insetting the mirror directly into crown molding. Either detail can truly be a game-changer.
Another option if you’re considering a mirror wall in a living room? An eglomise mirror. Properly known as verre eglomise, eglomise is the historical term for the technique of painting glass with gold or silver leaf. With an effect that’s similar to mercury glass, an eglomise wall-to-wall mirror feels infinitely more stylish than standard glass. The subtly marbled effect can make a wall feel more mural-like than glass-like and partners beautifully with luxe details like metallics and chandeliers. Artwork layered atop a wall-to-wall living room eglomise mirror will instantly take on a feeling of unconventional cool. Pieces in a darker palette, especially, will benefit from a mirror’s light-throwing properties.
Artful Lean
Mirror decoration ideas for the living room don’t end at wall-to-wall mirrors. If you’re more inclined to go with a traditional freestanding floor mirror, consider casually leaning one against a wall rather than opting for a traditional hang job. A completely transformative move, artfully leaning a living room floor mirror begets a sense of deconstructed elegance and off-the-cuff splendor. It may go without saying, but using a floor mirror in a living room is also a smart way to visually extend a small space—using a mirror to make a small room feel larger may be one of the oldest tricks in the book, but it’s also one of the finest.
When it comes to executing a leaning floor mirror in the living room, the more substantial your mirror, the better. Choose an oversized mirror with a weighty frame to make your mirror feel more like furniture. If your living room floor mirror isn’t much of a statement piece on its own, try layering it with a bench or a case piece like a trunk. A bench or chest pushed in front of your mirror can help to make your room feel designed with intention and stave off any perceptions that you’re using your living room as a temporary holdover space.
Over a Mantle
Those with fireplaces know that the area above a mantle can be a bit of a catch 22. Leave it blank and it can seem like a vexing void. Layer a painting over it and it can seem like the room’s end-all focal point, whether intended or not. Hanging a floor-length mirror over a mantle may seem unorthodox, but can actually yield striking results. Every bit as classic as an oil portrait, but plenty more versatile, a floor mirror hung over a mantle is a great way to extend your fireplace’s architecture and make ceilings look enviably lofty.
A mirror above a fireplace is a prime place to experiment with different shaped mirrors. Trumeau floor mirrors—mirrors that are encased between two pillars and topped with a crest or an apex—are a traditional choice for these areas, as are arched mirrors. If your living room is a bit design destitute, an arched full-length mirror can lend a bit of architectural flair. Set on a gold mirror for the living room? A French-inspired floor mirror with a gold frame embellished with Rococo details will also work magic over a mantle. To up its impact, consider heeding the advice above and lean your mirror instead of hanging it.
Dining Room
Restaurants and bars are notorious for employing mirrors as a way to brighten things up, multiply the effects of candlelight, and crank up the ambiance. When you consider all that, the question becomes: why not use a floor-length mirror in the dining room?
Although it might seem the epitome of unconventional, a floor-length mirror in the dining room can be an extraordinary pièce de résistance. After all, when it comes to architectural brio, it’s not uncommon for dining rooms to possess almost zero—a predicament that floor mirrors instantly fix. Like floor mirrors in the living room, the secret to making floor mirrors work in the dining room is scale. Make “go bold, or go home” your guiding mantra when decorating with floor-length mirrors in the dining room.
At the Head of the Table
Chances are if your dining room is an annexed room off the kitchen it comes accoutred with little more than a window. Depending on how your dining room is structured, this can leave one side of the room feeling more weighted than the other, especially if there’s no room to drop a credenza or buffet on the opposite wall. Rather than resort to art, try placing a floor mirror on the wall parallel to your window. Not only will a floor mirror lend balance, but it will visually enlarge the space. Even if your dining room isn’t a proper room, but a partitioned off space, a floor mirror can work wonders when used on a single wall.
Just like in a living room, the key to making a floor-length mirror work in a dining room is procuring a casual lean. Hanging a floor-length mirror can have the unintended effect of making a space look too rigidly designed. Laidback is the goal here, so look for mirrors with chunky frames that won’t be dwarfed by your dining set or chandelier.
Bedroom
Bedrooms might be floor-length mirrors’ natural habitat, but it can still be thorny factoring one in, especially when you consider all the other bedroom essentials like dressers and nightstands that need to be accounted for. To ward off the space crunch, it can be wise to scale down a floor-length mirror in a bedroom. Stick to a smaller profile mirror unless you have extra space in spades.
On an Easel
Make the most of an awkward corner in a bedroom by standing up a floor mirror on an easel. Whereas handing over an entire wall to a floor mirror can be a spatial sacrifice in a bedroom, a floor-length mirror with an easel can put an out-of-commission corner to work. Since bedrooms typically function as a go-between space between a closet and a bathroom, a full-length mirror on an easel feels like a relatively organic inclusion, whereas it wouldn’t necessarily be in a living room or a dining room.
As is the case with full-length mirrors in living rooms and dining rooms, a more conspicuous full-length mirror in a bedroom will boost your room’s style quota. Avoid full-length easel mirrors that feel overly simplistic unless your room’s already veering into style hedonism. Remember: unless stashed in a closet or behind a door, floor mirrors are almost always an opportunity to go for maximal impact.
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Lead photo by John Merkl
