This mirror was made for the hallway

I walked the hallway with a laundry basket on my hip and actually liked what I saw, which is not how most of my laundry trips go. That is new. For a long time this stretch of wall was just a stretch of wall. I would pass it on the way to the kitchen, on the way to the kids’ rooms, on the way out the door, and it never gave anything back. A hallway can feel like leftover space, the part of the house you only notice when something is wrong with it. I wanted this one to feel like a room, even if nobody was going to sit down in it.

I had measured it more than once. I had stood there and held my hands up like that would tell me something, which it never quite did, but it made me feel like I was being responsible. Too small and the wall still looks empty. Too big and you start walking around the mirror like it is furniture. I wanted the size that makes the hall look finished, not decorated. I wanted to stop thinking about the hall.

So we bought two of the Brightify gold oval wall mirrors. Twenty-eight by forty. We hung them sideways, one on each side of the hall, not lined up across from each other. They fit, which is a quieter sentence than it sounds. I have bought a lot of pretty things that did not fit. These look like they were waiting for those walls.

The size

Hallways are picky. They do not forgive a mirror that is almost right. This size is the one I kept coming back to, the way you keep coming back to a paint chip even after you have talked yourself into three other colors. Hung sideways, each one fills its wall without making the hall feel narrower. When I walk past, I see myself and a little extra light, and then I keep going. That is all I wanted. I did not want a statement I had to live up to. I wanted a hall that felt like I meant it, even on a morning when I did not mean much else.

They can hang vertical or horizontal. We hung ours horizontal. There are two, on opposite sides of the hallway, just not sitting directly across from one another. I did not want to walk through a bounce of my own face. I wanted light, and a little elegance, and a reason to slow down.

I wanted something elegant I would still like on an ordinary morning. Not a piece I would get tired of looking at.

The gold

The trim is gold, and it sits up off the glass. That lifted edge is what I like. It looks modern without trying to be trendy. It looks elegant without looking like I borrowed it from a hotel lobby and hoped nobody would ask. The frame has a little depth, so the mirror does not sit flat and cheap against the wall. It has a presence. A hallway can use a little presence. Two of them, even more, which I did not know until I had them and started actually stopping.

Quiet gold. Warm, not yellow. It catches the light from the end of the hall and makes the whole stretch feel a little more considered. I used to think a hallway did not get to be pretty. I was wrong, and I am happy to be wrong about it. Being wrong about a hallway is one of the nicer ways to be wrong.

I do not keep things that look cute in the photo and then feel like a costume in the house. This one is sleek enough that I do not apologize for it, and elegant enough that I still like it when I am in a rush and I catch my own face on the way out. Sometimes I even stop, which is a strange thing to admit about a hallway. I stop. I look. I go. It makes the pass-through feel like part of the day instead of the space between rooms.

Dean and Rey run this hall a dozen times a day. Mirrors in a hallway have to survive that kind of traffic and still look like themselves. These do. They do not feel fragile. They do not ask me to hover. They just hang there and make the pass-through feel like part of the house, which is all I was hoping for when I stood there with my hands in the air, pretending I knew what I was measuring.

Would I buy them again? I already did. Twice. I still slow down when I walk past, which is not something I planned for and not something I am willing to give back.

Happy Girl, Happy Home

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