Solid Wood Framed Mirror

Details

A wall mirror in 5 mm silvered float glass, made to IS 3438, in a mitred and splined frame of solid sheesham, Dalbergia sissoo. Both halves of a framed mirror are routinely misdescribed. The frame is the easy one: MDF wrapped in a printed wood-grain foil looks exactly like sheesham from a metre away and costs a tenth as much, and it is only found out when the foil lifts at a mitre in a humid month. The glass is the one nobody checks. A 3 mm mirror at 60 cm across is not flat enough to hold a true reflection and waves visibly as you move past it, which is what people mean when they say a mirror makes their face look wrong, and 4 mm is regularly sold as 5. Third is the silvering. Copper-backed silver corrodes from the edge inwards in a bathroom, and those black creeping marks along the border are a two-year failure, not a decade one.

• 5 mm float glass, silvered and made to IS 3438, so it is flat enough not to distort at this size
• Copper-free silvering under two coats of lead-free backing paint, tested 480 hours in neutral salt spray with no edge creep
• Safety backing film across the whole rear face, so a break stays on the film instead of falling into the room
• Frame in solid Dalbergia sissoo, mitred and splined at the corners, no MDF and no foil wrap
• Frame moisture 8 to 10 percent at dispatch under IS 287, waterborne finish under 50 g per litre VOC
• Two D-ring hangers rated 20 kg each, with wall plugs and screws supplied
• A mirror is heavy and it is glass. Fix it to masonry, not to a hollow partition with the plugs supplied, and get a second pair of hands for the rectangular one.