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East 18th Street, Manhattan — LED Backlit Low-Iron Mirror in a Marble Powder Room
Scope of Work
A powder room in an East 18th Street apartment, fully renovated, with every wall in a grey veined marble and a coved ceiling lit from a concealed channel. The designer wanted the mirror to belong to that lighting scheme rather than sit in front of it: a single sheet of glass spanning the wall between the marble returns, floating off the stone on a halo of light. Alex GC fabricated and installed a custom LED backlit mirror in low-iron glass, with cut-outs for the sconces and the outlet, and set it on the marble so that nothing but the glow shows.
Why Low-Iron
Standard mirror glass is faintly green, and against a warm grey marble the reflection goes cold and the halo of light around the edge picks up the tint. Low-iron mirror has the iron removed from the glass, so the stone reflects as its own colour and the light at the perimeter stays white. In a room where the whole point is the stone and the light, that is not a refinement; it is the difference between the mirror looking like part of the wall and looking like something hung on it. See low-iron vs standard glass for where the difference shows.
The Halo
The LED strip runs continuously behind the mirror’s perimeter, set back from the edge so the light washes the marble rather than pointing at the viewer. The mirror stands off the wall on a concealed frame that carries the strip and its driver, hardwired to the switch so the halo comes on with the room. Because the light hits stone with veining, the marble around the mirror reads as textured and lit rather than flat — the effect a designer means by “floating.” The same idea, done on white Carrara with a double vanity and a full-height powder-room mirror, is at 95 Greene Street in SoHo.
Installation on Marble
Stone is unforgiving: it cannot be patched, and a mirror set wrong on it is expensive. The mirror was measured after the marble was finished, cut with the sconce and outlet openings in the shop, and the edges polished. On site it was set on mirror-safe neutral mastic — never a solvent adhesive, which attacks the silver — and held with tape across the perimeter while the mastic cured, which is what the photographs show. The tape comes off, the sconces and the faucet go in, and the wall is finished. No clips, no J-channel, no visible fixings; the halo hides the edge.
What It Does for a Bathroom
A backlit low-iron mirror is the single change that lifts an ordinary bathroom to the level of the stone around it. It adds a layer of light at face height that flatters, it makes a small room read larger because the wall appears to recede behind the glow, and it replaces a framed mirror and a vanity light with one clean element. It suits a powder room, a primary bath, a hotel suite or a spa, and it can be made to any size and shape. See our Manhattan work for other apartments and townhouses.
Photographs
Photographed during installation, with the halo lit and the mirror taped while the adhesive cures, before the fixtures were fitted.
Similar Work and Related Specifications
Mirrors & reflective glass · Low-iron glass · Antique mirror · Windows, doors and glass in Manhattan · 95 Greene Street — LED backlit mirrors, SoHo · 829 Garfield Avenue — gym mirror wall, Jersey City
Planning Something Similar?
A backlit mirror for a bathroom, a powder room or a vanity in Manhattan, Brooklyn or anywhere in the tri-state area. Send a photo of the wall and the size and we will draw it, specify the glass and the light, and quote.