Large Mirrors

Retailers are loose with the word. IKEA's "large mirrors" category starts at a 30 x 115cm strip, and plenty of shops call 150cm large because it is taller than their dressing mirrors. We use it the way people searching for it use it: a mirror noticeably bigger than the 160 x 60cm bedroom standard, which in practice means 180cm or taller and 80cm or wider, so it shows more than one person or fills a wall rather than the gap beside a wardrobe. A large full length mirror is a mirror you arrange a room around.

Within that there are two tiers. Large is 180cm tall and 80 to 105cm wide: the 180cm mirror most people mean when they type "large floor mirror", and we have 14 of them in oval, arched, rectangular and window designs. Extra large is 200cm tall and 100 to 120cm wide, where the mirror is a piece of furniture and also a logistics exercise, and we have 8 of those. A 200 x 120cm arch is an extra large mirror by anyone's definition; it is also 33 to 39kg, which is why delivery gets its own section further down.

Width is what separates large from merely tall. A long mirror at 160 x 60cm is tall but not large: one person, a hallway, a wardrobe door. A 180 x 90cm mirror is large: two people, a whole outfit, and a reflected window that lights the room.

Into something solid, with two fixings, and with the weight in front of you before you start. The lightest mirror on this page is 20.8kg and the heaviest 39kg. A large wall mirror in that range is a different fixing job from a picture, and the fixing has to match the wall rather than the mirror. The hanging hardware is already on the back of every one of ours; the plugs and screws are yours to choose, because they depend on what the wall is made of.

Brick or block is straightforward: two wall plugs and screws sized for the plug will carry anything here. Plasterboard is the wall people worry about, and above 20kg the worry is justified. Find the timber studs behind the board with a stud finder and screw into those, or fix a timber batten across two studs and hang the mirror from the batten. Hollow-wall anchors on their own are for lighter mirrors than these; our rule for a large mirror for wall mounting is timber or masonry, never board alone. Dot-and-dab plasterboard over brick needs long frame fixings that reach the brick behind the gap. The hanging guide walks through each wall with the tools named.

Two details that only matter at this weight. First, hang from two points, never one, so a knock cannot swing the mirror on a single screw. Second, a full length wall mirror over 25kg hangs better from a split batten or a plate than from a wire, because the weight then bears straight down onto the screws instead of pulling outward. Lift with two people, set it on the fixings, step back, level it, and only then tighten.

Not on its own, and not on ours. None of the 22 mirrors here has feet, so a large standing mirror in the strict sense, a frame on a splayed stand, is not something we sell; the free standing mirror page explains what to look for in one. What every mirror here does is lean. A large floor mirror of 180 or 200cm rests against the wall at a slight angle, its base about 15 to 20cm out from the skirting, and its own weight holds it there. That weight is also the problem: a 30kg leaner mirror that tips lands with all of it on whoever pulled it.

So a big floor mirror gets a strap. An anti-tip strap kit, the nylon-and-bracket set sold for chests of drawers, costs a few pounds, takes one screw in the wall and four minutes, and stops the mirror being pulled forward. It is not a hanging hook and it is not rated for the weight; it is a safety line. Fit it on the day the mirror arrives, before it goes anywhere near a child or a dog. The guide to securing a leaning mirror covers the strap, the screw-eye-and-cable alternative and the L-bracket for a toddler's room.

An oversized floor mirror leant in a dressing room or a living room is where leaning looks best, because the tilt lifts the reflection and nobody is squeezing past it. In a hallway, hang it. Leaners get knocked where people carry things, and a hallway is nothing but people carrying things.

Three things change, and all of them are numbers. The weight: our eight 200cm mirrors run from 33.2kg (the Arched 200 x 120cm) to 39kg (the Lattice Window 200 x 120cm), which is a two-person lift to hang and a two-person delivery to the door. The wall: a 200cm mirror hung with its bottom edge 20cm up needs 2.2m of clear height, and most UK ceilings are around 2.4m, so it needs a wall with no picture rail, no coving in the way and nothing hung above it. The route: a 200cm carton has to get through the front door and, if the mirror is going upstairs, round the half landing. The next section is about that.

What you get for the trouble is a mirror that reflects a room rather than a person. At 200 x 120cm the glass is 2.4 square metres. Face it towards a window and a dark hallway or a north-facing living room changes character. The 180cm mirror does most of the same job for a bedroom; the extra large mirror 200cm is for the room where the mirror is the point. If height is the only reason you are looking at 200cm, stop: a 180cm mirror shows anyone up to about 205cm tall head to toe, which covers every adult you will ever meet.

Not if the frame is doing its job, and that is how every mirror here is built. Float glass weighs 2.5kg per square metre per millimetre, so a 180 x 90cm sheet is 16.2kg at 4mm and 20.3kg at 5mm, and a 200 x 120cm sheet is 24kg at 4mm and 30kg at 5mm. The maker of our range uses 4mm safety-backed glass in a welded 15 to 20mm steel frame with a backing right up to 200cm, and the delivered weights, 33 to 39kg for the 200 x 120cm mirrors, tell you the frame and backboard are carrying a third of the total. That rigidity is what keeps a big sheet flat. Where 5mm earns its weight is a mirror with nothing else holding it: a frameless design with no backboard, or a thin clip-on frame on a tall sheet. Our Frameless Rectangular 200 x 120cm is 4mm on a steel backing rather than bare glass, which is why it weighs 35.5kg and not 24.

Why does flatness matter more at this size? Because a bowed sheet stretches or compresses what it shows, usually across the middle third, which is exactly where your body is, and on a big mirror the bow has more length to develop. If you have stood in front of a two-metre mirror in a hotel corridor that made everyone look tall and narrow, that was a thin sheet in a weak frame. The test at home takes ten seconds: stand to one side and look at the reflection of a door frame or a skirting board. A straight line should stay straight all the way up. The glass thickness guide has the rest, including the backing standards to ask about.

A hallway is the room that gains most from a large mirror and tolerates it least. Most British halls are a metre or so wide, so the mirror cannot lean (it would be knocked twice a day and it steals 20cm of floor) and it cannot be wide without dominating. The answer is a large hallway mirror hung flat, 180cm tall, 80 to 90cm wide, on the long wall or facing the front door so it throws the daylight from the door glass back down the hall.

Shape matters more here than anywhere. A window mirror at 180 x 90cm is the natural hallway piece: the black or gold bars read as a second window, the panes break the reflection so a passing coat does not become a wall of coat, and the design is meant to be seen all day rather than only when you dress. Our Lattice Window and Window Pane 180 x 90cm are £299.95 and 27.6 to 27.9kg; the arched versions are £339.95. Black is the usual pick because it reads as architecture, and a black full length mirror hides the fingerprints a hallway collects.

When it reflects the bed. A large bedroom mirror earns its place beside the wardrobe, side-on to the window so you are lit from the side rather than silhouetted, and angled so what it reflects is you, the window and the floor rather than the duvet. At 180 x 90cm it does that in any bedroom with a 2.5m wall to spare. At 180 x 105cm it needs a bigger room and shows two people dressing at once, which is the dressing-room use. At 200 x 120cm, in a bedroom under about 4m on its long side, it stops being a mirror and becomes a wall, and it reflects whatever is opposite, which in most bedrooms is the bed. Buy the 200 for the hallway or the living room and the 180 for the bedroom.

A bedroom is also the one room where leaning is sensible, because nobody is carrying bags past the mirror, so a Gentle Arch 180 x 90cm leant beside a wardrobe with a strap at the top is the arrangement we would start with. Gold warms a sage, navy or terracotta bedroom; a gold full length mirror in satin champagne-brass is quieter than it sounds. Black suits white and grey rooms and anything with black handles or taps nearby.

Two ways. It reflects light, which brightens the room, and it reflects floor, which makes the room read as deeper than it is. Both scale with glass area, which is why an extra large mirror on the end wall of a narrow living room or across the back of a dining area can make the space feel close to double its size. The effect works against you just as hard when the mirror faces the wrong thing. A huge mirror opposite a cluttered shelving unit doubles the clutter. One facing a blank wall adds nothing.

The placement rule is simple. Stand where the mirror will go, look at what is opposite, and ask whether you want two of it. A window, a doorway into another room, a plain wall with a lamp, a dining table: yes. The back of the sofa, the television, a radiator: no. In a narrow room put it on the end wall to add depth; in a square room put it on the longest wall; in a room under about 3 by 3 metres, take the 180 rather than the 200 and lean it on the longest wall so it reflects across the short dimension. Leave 10cm or so between the top of a leaner and the coving so it does not look jammed in.

This is the part most mirror pages skip and the part that decides whether you are pleased on delivery day. Every mirror on this page travels on a two-person service: two people carry it to your door and, where the route allows, into the ground-floor room of your choice. The carton is a little bigger than the mirror in every direction, so for a 200 x 120cm mirror allow roughly 210 by 130cm, and it travels on its long edge because it will not go through a doorway flat.

Measure three things before you order. The front door opening with the door fully open: a standard UK external door leaf is 838mm or wider, so the door itself is rarely the problem. The tightest turn on the route: a two-metre carton on edge will turn a right angle between corridors about 75cm wide in theory, and in practice the half landing and the headroom over the stairs are where 200cm mirrors fail. The doorway of the room it is going into: a standard internal door is 762mm wide and about 2m high, and the carton goes through on edge, so height is the limit. A straight hall and a ground-floor room take anything on this page. A Victorian terrace with a dog-leg stair is where the 180cm mirror is the sensible choice and the 200cm one is a Saturday morning you will remember.

Hanging it is still a two-person job once it is inside, so have someone ready. Full delivery terms, including the offshore postcodes we quote separately, are on the delivery page, and how to move a large mirror covers getting it from the hall to the room without a corner knock.

Unwrap it the day it arrives, not at the weekend, because the damage window is 24 hours. With the carton upright and a second person steadying it, cut the straps and slide the mirror out onto a soft surface. Look at the glass edge to edge in good light, run a hand around the frame corners, and check the back. Large mirrors are the ones most likely to pick up a corner knock in transit, because the corners take the load every time the carton is set down.

If anything is wrong, photograph the damage and the carton, including the courier label, and email us within 24 hours. We dispatch a replacement free and you keep the damaged one for disposal; you never pay to send a 30kg mirror back and you never have to find a box for it. Change of mind is different: 14 days from delivery, unused and in its packaging, and the return carriage is yours, which at this size is real money. Measure the wall and the route twice. The returns page has both policies in full.

The ones we would talk you out of, with the number behind each.

For a full length mirror of 180cm or more, from about £129 to several hundred pounds, and the spread tracks glass area, frame construction and whether the frame is metal, wood or absent. IKEA's biggest, the 78 x 196cm HOVET, is £129 and the top of its large mirror category. The specialists start around £210: Daals' extra large arched mirrors run £210 to £320, Mirror Outlet lists a 174 x 110cm black window leaner at £259.99, and William Wood's 185 x 100cm washed-wood Antoine is £339. Our 22 large mirrors run £239.95 to £399.95, and every 200cm mirror we sell is £399.95 whatever the design.

Our view is that £240 to £340 buys a large mirror you will keep for years, because at that price you are getting a welded steel frame that holds 4mm glass flat at 180cm, and that £399.95 for a 200cm mirror is fair only when the room can use two metres of glass. Above £400 you are into solid wood, bevelled edges and bespoke sizes, which is furniture, and priced like it.