There are various reasons for decorating your living room, furnishing you bedroom and bathroom or equipping your store or office with a custom frameless mirror, instead of settling for a mirror at a local boutique.
It goes from achieving a look truly unique to your home, to accommodating specific dimensional and functional requirements; even to saving some money.
Depending on your needs, a variety of factors will influence the cost of your frameless mirror. Knowing these factors will save you some money because it spares you the bad luck of a broken mirror or the inconvenience of a piece not fitting.
Shape, dimensions, and edge polishing parameters will determine the cost of a frameless mirror. In some cases, you also need to pay attention to details like angle cuts, holes, cutouts or notches. Continue your read to learn more about each parameter and how to get your custom mirror order right.
Mirror Shape Cost
There are four main custom mirror shape categories you will find hanging in homes and stores across North America: rectangle, mirror, circle and oval. Here is an idea of how these different shapes will influence your online order price.
Rectangle Mirror
Rectangle mirrors are often the best looking and most efficient mirrors for any application, including (but not limited to) bathroom vanities, kitchen backsplashes or bedroom dressers. Custom rectangle mirrors are the most affordable mirrors, given that you get it with at the right size. We’ll get to that.
Square Mirror
Can’t go much simpler than a square mirror in terms of fabrication. This allows for a lower cost. Careful though: Oversize square mirrors – upwards of 4 feet – are harder to handle and install.
Circle Mirrors
Depending on your overall background style, you might want to opt for a circle mirror, in an aerial Scandinavian environment for instance. Circle frameless mirrors will cost a bit more because they require more complex cutting equipment, but it’s often worth the extra buck.
Oval Mirror
The cost for an oval mirror is a tad more expensive – higher than a circle mirror – since production requires multiple complicated interventions. Paying that little elliptic mirror extra is no luxury in achieving a modern look.
How Dimensions Impact Your Mirror Cost
Size is an obvious factor in your frameless mirror order price. The bigger the mirror, the pricier it gets of course, but the increase not follow a straight linear formula.
Under 4 feet in width or length, a mirror will cost up to 50% less than bigger mirrors. If you really want to go jumbo and artificially expand your space, then it’s worthwhile digging a little further into your wallet, but at some point will have to consider truly harder handling and installing conditions.
Don’t worry too much about your mirror thickness: Just get 5mm (3/16″) standard thickness, unless you really need 3mm (1/8″) to fit a particular space. Mirrors that thin can break very easily.
Here are some frameless mirror dimension standards:
Vanity Mirror
12” to 48” in width, 12” to 48” in length
Ideal size: 36” x 24”
Comment: It’s a good thing to pay a little extra and get a bigger mirror for your vanity to achieve a spacious bathroom environment, but do not exceed 48” in width and 48” in length. This may be too big for nothing and in for some serious challenges when handling, installing, moving or removing your custom mirror.
Bedroom Mirror
12” to 24” in width, 12” to 60” in length
Ideal size: 18” x 48”
Comment: Go for a frameless mirror longer (higher) than wide for space saving purposes.
Floor-to-ceiling Wall Mirror (or Gym Mirror)
24” to 84” in width, 24” to 84” in length
Ideal size: 24” x 72”
Comment: It’s tempting to stick gigantic 7-foot mirrors all around your home gym but think of how are hard those can be to mount or remove. If someone is as tall as Yao Ming in your family, you can get 84” high custom frameless mirrors, but make sure you order them significantly smaller in width – more than half the length.
Edge Polishing: Flat Polished Edges are Worth the Cost
Most of the time, frameless mirror edges are exposed because, well – the mirror is frameless. To preserve a clean, slick look, you will need flat polished edges with a small, almost unnoticeable 1/8” bevel. These edges are more expensive, but essential to have a perfect looking mirror.
In some cases though, flat polished edges are not required, when the frameless mirror edges are not exposed. For example, if you want to put up mirrors all along your home gym walls, pick seamed edges (or sanded edges); no one will see the difference because the mirror seams will be concealed. Same goes for a wall-to-wall vanity mirror sitting on the sink counter.
Seamed edges still look pretty good though and can be a solution if you really want to save the extra buck, even if your mirror edges will be exposed.
Glass Fabrication : Angles, Notches, Holes, Cutouts, etc.
Last thing that may impact your mirror order price significantly is if you need some special tweaks. Angle cuts, holes, cutouts or notches don’t come cheap, but sometimes are necessary for mirrors to fit given applications.
Expect the following extra fees for these add-ons (price per unit):
- Hole: $10 to $20
- Notch: $20 to $30
- Angle Cut: $35 to $45
- Cutout: $30 to $50
Remember that these requirements are most of the time very doable, just send the manufacturer a plan or drawing and measurements.
