Mirrors are usually the last thing chosen and one of the first things blocked in. That order causes problems. By the time someone picks the mirror, the electrician has already set the boxes for the sconces, the tile layout is fixed, and the medicine cabinet either fits the framed opening or it does not. The design choice is easy; the sequencing is what trips people up.
Decide surface-mount or recessed before rough-in
A recessed medicine cabinet has to live inside a stud bay, and in an older Alexandria house that bay is frequently occupied — a vent stack, a drain line, or old wiring runs exactly where you wanted the cabinet. Finding that out during rough-in means either relocating plumbing or accepting a surface-mounted unit that projects into the room.
Neither answer is wrong. But the decision has to happen before the walls close, and it is worth walking the space with the contractor while the framing is still open rather than choosing from a catalogue afterward.
Lighting placement outranks mirror shape
The most common complaint about a finished bathroom is not that the mirror is the wrong shape. It is that the light is unflattering, and that comes down to fixture position. A single downlight above the mirror throws shadows straight down — under the eyes, under the chin — which is precisely wrong for shaving or applying makeup.
Light coming from both sides at roughly face height solves it. That means sconces flanking the mirror, which in turn constrains how wide the mirror can be. A wide mirror spanning a double vanity and side sconces are, in a lot of bathrooms, mutually exclusive; you pick one and design around it. Integrated LED mirrors are a third route and sidestep the conflict entirely, at the cost of being a fixed unit you cannot easily swap later.
Colour temperature matters here too and gets almost no attention. Bulbs that read warm and yellow will make it hard to judge anything colour-critical at the mirror.
Size it to the vanity, not the wall
The usual guidance is to keep the mirror no wider than the vanity below it, and it holds up. A mirror that overhangs the cabinet reads as an accident. Slightly narrower reads as deliberate.
Height gets less thought than it should in houses with people of noticeably different heights. Hanging the mirror so its centre suits one adult can leave it wrong for everyone else. A taller mirror is the simplest fix, and in a room with a low ceiling it also buys some visual height.
What mirrors actually do to a small bathroom
The claim that a mirror makes a room feel larger is true, but it depends entirely on what it reflects. A mirror facing a window bounces daylight deeper into the room and genuinely opens it up. A mirror facing a blank wall or, worse, the toilet, doubles something nobody wanted doubled.
This is easy to test before committing: hold a large piece of cardboard where the mirror would go and look at what sits opposite it. Thirty seconds of that saves a lot of regret. It is the same instinct behind planning around how the room will actually be used day to day rather than how it photographs.
Fog, glass, and the boring practicalities
Anti-fog mirrors work by heating the glass, which means they need power — another reason the decision belongs at rough-in. In a bathroom with a properly sized and correctly vented exhaust fan, fogging is less of a problem to begin with, and fixing the fan is usually the better spend.
Beveled and antiqued glass suit older houses and hide edge wear well. Frameless glass is cleaner and cheaper to replace. Frames in wood or painted finishes need to tolerate a humid room; some do not, and they telegraph it at the joints within a couple of years.
Where this sits in the budget
Mirrors and their lighting are a small fraction of a bathroom renovation, which is exactly why they get decided casually. The cost of getting them wrong is not the mirror — it is the electrical rework, or living with bad light for a decade. When you are comparing bids, it is worth checking that the lighting plan is specified rather than left as an allowance, because allowances are where this particular problem hides. Vale Construction of Alexandria published a cost breakdown that separates those line items, which makes the comparison easier when quotes come back structured differently.
Treated as a fixture rather than an accessory, the mirror stops being an afterthought and starts doing the job it is actually there for — a shift that pays off in the same way that spending where it counts rather than where it shows tends to.