News

A mirror is the one piece of bedroom furniture people buy on looks alone. It has no drawers to count and no weight rating to check, so the decision gets made on the frame and nothing else, and then it goes up on the wall and something feels off. What is usually off is arithmetic. There are six mirrors in the Cedora range: four squares of 100 x 100cm and two circles of 90cm. Those two shapes are not style options, they are two different pieces of furniture, and the chest of drawers underneath is what separates them. Key Takeaways Four mirrors are 100cm squares, two are 90cm circles, and nothing in between. The squares are sized for a 140cm chest, leaving 20cm of clear surface each side. Sitting on an 85cm chest, a square mirror cuts the reflection off near your ankles. Only the round Liverpool mirror lets you choose your own hanging height. Depth runs 4cm to 5.5cm, so none of them projects far into a narrow room. Four Squares and Two Circles, Nothing in Between The London Pine Mirror, the Manchester Pine Mirror, the Bristol Pine Mirror and the Newcastle Acacia Mirror are all 100cm wide by 100cm high. The London is 5.5cm deep and the other three are 5cm. In every practical sense they are the same object wearing four different frames. The other two are the Liverpool Pine Mirror - Natural and the Liverpool Pine Mirror - Black, both round, both 90cm across and 4cm deep. There is no oval, no tall rectangle and no leaner in the range, which sounds like a limitation until you notice that the four squares all exist for the same reason. The frames are where the ranges separate themselves. London and Manchester are crisp white with moulded detailing, the Newcastle adds a shaped crown across the top, and the Bristol runs a timber rail along the top edge that picks up the oak top of the matching chest. The Liverpool circles are the only ones with no painted white in them at all. The Squares Are Sized for the Chest, Not the Wall Every six drawer chest in the Cedora range is 140 x 45 x 85cm. Set a 100cm mirror on top of one and you get 20cm of clear chest surface on either side, which is not an accident. That is enough room for a lamp on one side and a tray on the other, and not enough for anyone to start stacking things in front of the glass. The London and Manchester mirrors are built to attach to their chests, so the two pieces become one unit and there is no gap collecting dust behind them. The Bristol and Newcastle are made to pair with theirs visually rather than mechanically. Either way the geometry is the same and the mirror inherits its height from the furniture. That is the part worth understanding before you buy. A mirror that hangs is a decision you make with a pencil and a spirit level. A mirror that sits on a chest is a decision the chest already made for you at the factory, and the only variable left is which wall the chest goes on. Why It Stops at Your Ankles Here is the arithmetic that catches people out. A flat mirror shows you a point on your body reflected at half the height between your eyes and that point, which is why a mirror only has to be half your height to show all of you. A 100cm mirror is easily big enough. Where it sits is the problem. Resting on an 85cm chest, the bottom edge of the glass is 85cm off the floor. For someone around 175cm tall, with eyes at roughly 163cm, the lowest thing that bottom edge can reflect is about 7cm above the floor: your ankles, your socks, and not your shoes. The top edge at 185cm, meanwhile, is showing you about 16cm of the ceiling behind your head. None of that makes it a bad mirror. It makes it a mirror for checking a shirt, doing your hair and putting on earrings, which is what a bedroom mirror above a chest is genuinely used for at seven in the morning. It just means that if you want to see the shoes before you leave, that check happens somewhere else in the house. [products-of-collection collection="mirror" heading="Shop Bedroom Mirrors and Chest Sets" limit="8" columns="4" columns_mobile="2" section_id="blog-mirror-1"] The Round Ones Solve What the Squares Cannot A mirror on the wall can go wherever you put it, and the Liverpool circles are the only two in the range that give you that choice. At 90cm across they are slightly smaller than the squares, but hung with the centre of the glass at 150cm to 155cm they sit at standing eye level, and the reflection then reaches far enough down to be useful. The shape earns its place in a small room too. A circle has no corners to crowd a doorway or a wardrobe, and it reads as lighter on a wall than the same area of square glass. In a bedroom where the mirror has to go on a narrow strip of wall between a window and a robe, that difference decides whether the piece looks placed or squeezed. The two finishes point in opposite directions. The natural has a warm oak toned frame that disappears into a light room, while the black is a matte contrast piece that draws the eye to whatever it hangs above. Both are 4cm deep, and neither needs a chest underneath to make sense of it. What a Square Metre of Glass Does to a Dark Bedroom Australian bedrooms are frequently the worst lit rooms in the house. Builders put the living areas on the good aspect and leave the bedrooms facing a fence, a side path or a neighbour's wall two metres away. By four in the afternoon the room needs a light on, in a country with more sunshine than it knows what to do with. A mirror is the cheapest correction available. One square metre of glass placed on the wall beside or opposite the window collects whatever daylight enters and throws it into the corner that never gets any. The effect is strongest when the mirror can see actual sky rather than the reflection of another wall, so the wall you choose matters more than the frame you choose. It also does something for the sense of size that paint colour cannot. A mirror on the long wall of a narrow bedroom reads as a second window, and a room with two apparent windows feels wider than the same room with one. That is not decorating advice, it is the reason the piece is worth its wall space in the first place. Buying It With the Chest or Buying It Later Two of the pairs are also sold as one item, the London Pine 6 Drawer Chest with Mirror and the Newcastle Acacia 6 Drawer Chest with Mirror, which is the simpler route if you know the mirror is going above the chest anyway. Buying the two pieces separately costs roughly the same and gives you the option to change your mind about where the glass ends up. If you are hanging rather than resting, the fixing matters more than anything discussed so far. These are timber framed mirrors, not lightweight plastic, and they need a proper wall fixing into a stud or a rated anchor into plasterboard. A mirror that comes down takes the wall with it, and in a bedroom it does that above a bed. The last thing to check is the reflection itself. Stand where the mirror will hang and look back: whatever you see there is what the mirror will show the room, every day, permanently. A mirror facing a window is a second window and a mirror facing a laundry basket is a second laundry basket. The bedroom mirror range gives you the shape and the frame, but the wall does the rest. Frequently Asked Questions How big should a bedroom mirror above a chest of drawers be? Narrower than the chest, and by a clear margin. The Cedora chests are 140cm wide and the square mirrors are 100cm, which leaves 20cm of clear top on either side. That gap is what stops the arrangement looking like a wardrobe door, and it is also where the lamp goes. How high should a bedroom mirror be hung? For a mirror hanging on its own, centre the glass around 150cm to 155cm from the floor so it sits at standing eye level. For a mirror resting on a chest the height is already decided: the chest is 85cm, so the mirror starts there whether that suits you or not. Can you see your whole outfit in a 100cm mirror? Not when it sits on a chest. The bottom edge lands at 85cm above the floor, which cuts the reflection off around ankle height for most adults. You get head, torso and legs to the shin, which is enough to check a shirt and not enough to check shoes. Do the mirrors attach to the chest of drawers? The London and Manchester mirrors are made to attach securely to their matching chest, and both can also be used on their own. The Bristol and Newcastle mirrors are made to pair with their chests visually. The Liverpool mirror is round and hangs on the wall. What shape of bedroom mirror suits a small room? A round one, because it takes less wall area for the same visual presence and has no corner to catch your eye or your shoulder. The Liverpool mirror is 90cm across and only 4cm deep, so it projects less from the wall than a light switch plate and a door frame combined. Related Posts How to Choose a Mirror Chest of Drawers Height: Standard Sizes and Choosing Guide How to Style a Chest of Drawers: A Simple Formula Stay in the loop Get styling ideas and early access to new arrivals, straight to your inbox.