Mirror lamps

The mirror area represents a fundamental light source when designing a bathroom because a poorly illuminated mirror never reflects the image correctly creating shadows and changing colors. Choosing the right type of lamp isn’t that hard. You just need to follow some guidelines before focusing on the looks.

How many light spots you have to place around your mirror? It depends on how you are going to use the mirror. A light spot placed above the mirror enlightens the face when you are looking in the mirror and it helps you to see more clearly. You can create a light spot with a clip swiveling mirror lamp or you can do it with a spotlight built in the false ceiling and lined up with the border of the sink. Anyways, light coming from above usually makes shadows altering the perception of the complexion specially under the nose, on the chin and under the eyes. It would be better to place additional light spots on both sides of the mirror. Side lamps eliminate shadows and improve the complexion perception reflecting images correctly. The light spots have to be placed at face height, i.e. on an average of 150 and 175 cm from the floor. As an alternative you can choose suspended lamps which have to be waterproof considering they’re close to the tap and sink. For smaller mirrors you just have to use one light spot with a less intense light flux, while for bigger ones it’s better to align more light sources. To avoid inconvenient glares, avoid pointing the light sources directly to the mirror.

In order to see the natural skin tones you must choose the right lighting. In the mirror area the best kind of light would be the soft and diffused one, the one you can look at directly. You may want to choose high chromatic yield lamps. The higher the yield, the more natural the colors.
For your safety be sure to choose the lamps with a right IP category. Lamps installed above and on the sides of the mirror are in safety zone 3 so they must comply with the IP21 category. (Protection from foreign bodies of average size and vertical dripping resistance).