Up the Glamour with Mirrors

Mirrors have long been a favorite tool of stagers for the reflective qualities in lightening up interiors and elongating spaces. Lately, mirrors are making a bigger statements in rooms too.

The latest trends in mirrors: Whimsical, oval-shaped mirrors, such as in vintage-gold or silver, that are displayed in the entryway or over a sofa or bed, says Audra Slinkey, owner of the Home Staging Resource, a national staging and redesign training company.

Big mirrors are "in" too. For example, stagers are using oversized rectangular, framed mirrors that stand on the floor, sometimes 7 feet to 10 feet high, to freshen up a living room or bedroom space, says Barb Schwarz, credited as the creator of home staging and founder of StagedHomes.com, which offers training in staging.

In a bathroom, sometimes all it takes is adding a frame to the mirror to give the space a more high-end touch. Some stagers are swapping out the plate glass mirror in a bathroom for an oval-framed mirror in the powder bathroom or a dark-wood framed mirror in the master bathroom. Companies are surfacing to make adding frames easier, without even having to buy an entirely new mirror. For example, MirrorMate allows you to add a frame to a mirror in a do-it-yourself project by using a pre-taped frame press onto the existing plate glass mirror.