Designers Tips for Decorating With Mirrors

 Maximize a room's style with a well-placed mirror. Interior designers share their top tips for decorating with mirrors throughout your home

Decorative Windows

According to designers there are never rules when it comes to decorating with mirrors. 

Mirrors bring light and depth into rooms — they're like decorative windows you can move around and place as you like. 

Mirrors have several benefits and can  reflect and emphasize views and colors from art and/or adjacent walls creating special effects.

Mirror Crazy

Designer Jennifer Duneier believes you can never have enough mirrors in a home. Try something new — hang multiple mirrors on the same wall. "If you use them together on a wall, you want them to be grouped in a visually-pleasing way, similar to art pieces," designer Amy Bubier says. "The scale of the mirrors should be proportional to each other and to the wall space — avoid using small mirrors on a large wall.

The Perfect Spot

Mirrors can be displayed in every room of the house, but a favorite spot for designers is the entryway. "Entries, rooms that lack natural light and dining areas can be a great place because they create an opportunity for creative lighting, candles, ambience, art and reflectivity," designer Amy Bubier says. Jennifer Duneier is a designer who enjoys a mirrored entryway so everyone can do a final check before leaving the house.

Design Must-Have

Mirrors can add an extra decorative touch to a room. This duo suits the modern, yet vintage feel of the bedroom. "Mirrors are like art in that the style should coincide with other pieces in your home," designer Amy Bubier says. "They are an integral part of the design style." Designer Celia Berliner believes well-placed mirrors can aesthetically enhance an interior with the use of stylish frames, like these distressed, reflective-framed beauties.

Double the Space

Add mirrors to any space you want to visually expand. "The location and placement of the mirror are key when utilizing them — you want to ensure that it will not create undesirable reflections and will allow it to maximize its innate qualities," designer Celia Berliner says. Mirrors, like this large dining room one, brighten the room, create additional luminosity and add dimension to the space, she says

Mirrored Art

A bold and gorgeous mirror can be the focal point of a room. Designer Andreas Charalambous of FORMA Design uses this extra-large mirror to "reflect the light from the balcony below and to serve as a last-minute check point as the owners head out to work," he says. "The mirror itself becomes the artwork in this minimal set up." Even a large wall mirror can bring simplicity to a space if used correctly.

Make a Room Seem Larger

Tight spaces expand and rooms seem roomier when you prop up a large mirror (at least three-fourths as tall as the wall). It’s a classic interior decorator’s trick to create instant―if not real―square footage.

Go for a Reflective Grouping

Randomly group mirrors of various shapes and sizes, featuring different frames or borders for a collector’s look.

Let It Glow

Fireplaces, like mittens and sleds, go unused during the summer. But the space is perfect for positioning a mirror behind pillar candles to reflect their soft, flickering light.