Window Mirrors

What a window mirror is

A window mirror is a mirror divided into panes by bars, so that what you see is closer to a window than to a sheet of glass. The bars are the point. They break the reflection into sections the way real glazing does, and at a glance on a plain wall the eye reads an opening before it reads a mirror. Some are one piece of glass with bars laid over it and some are genuinely separate panes; either way the effect is the same and the difference is one of construction rather than looks.

Arched, round and rectangular

Arched is much the most common shape here, and it is the one that carries the idea furthest, because a curved head is what most people picture when they picture an old window. Rectangular versions read more like a modern casement and sit well in a room with square doorways. A smaller group are round, which is the least literal of the three and behaves more like a porthole than a window. If the illusion matters to you, arched is the one to start with.

Black frames and washed wood

Black dominates this range and it is the right finish for the job: a dark bar reads as a shadow line, which is what a real glazing bar looks like from inside a room. Most of those frames are metal, which keeps the bars thin enough to be convincing. The other group is washed wood in brown tones, which trades some of the crispness for warmth and suits a room with timber already in it. Glass is in nearly all of them and the frames split between metal and wood.

Where the illusion works

Hallways and living rooms take most of these, in equal measure, and both work for the same reason: a window mirror does its best work on a wall that has no window. A windowless hallway, an internal wall, a dining room end wall or a chimney alcove all give you the blank surface the effect needs. A useful number suit a dining room, which is less common across our other mirror pages. What does not work is hanging one beside a real window, where the comparison is immediate and the mirror loses.

Sizes and proportion

This range runs large with a solid group of extra large pieces. That suits the idea: a window is a big thing, and a small window mirror reads as a picture frame with bars on it. On a blank wall, go up a size rather than down. If you are hanging one over furniture the usual two thirds rule still applies, though a window mirror carries a taller proportion better than most because a tall window is an ordinary thing to see.

Fixing and keeping them clean

Metal-framed pieces at this size are heavy, so fix into studs or masonry rather than plasterboard alone and check the stated weight before buying the fixings. Cleaning takes slightly longer than a plain mirror because the bars catch dust and the corners of each pane need a cloth rather than a spray. Spray onto the cloth, not onto the glass, or cleaner collects along the bottom edge of every bar and dries there.