The best magnifying mirrors

Why magnification and light are one decision

This is the thing that is not obvious until you own a magnifying mirror, and it explains why so many of them end up in a drawer.

Magnification works by shortening the distance at which you can focus on detail. At 1x you stand at arm’s length. At 5x you are perhaps a foot away. At 10x your face is a few inches from the glass.

Now consider where the light in a bathroom comes from: above and behind you. The closer you get to the mirror, the more completely your own head blocks that light from reaching your face.

So an unlit 10x mirror is often worse than a plain one. You have magnified the detail and eliminated the light you needed to see it. Which is why every mirror on this page is lit, and why the lux figure matters as much as the magnification.

Which magnification, by task

1x. Not magnification at all, and necessary. Anything involving the whole face — foundation, checking a shave, seeing what you look like — needs to be done at 1x, because at higher magnification you cannot see the shape of your own face.

3x to 5x. The everyday range. Enough for eyeliner, eyebrows, a close shave and contact lenses, while still showing enough of the face for context. If you buy one magnification, buy this one.

10x. Genuinely close detail: tweezing, ingrown hairs, splinters. Powerful and disorienting, with a very shallow depth of field — move an inch and it goes out of focus. Only worth having lit.

15x and above. Beyond the useful range for most people. The working distance becomes so short that lighting and focus are both impractical.

The specifications that decide this, in order

Lux, and whether it varies. simplehuman publishes “100-800 Lux” — a range, not a single figure. A mirror you can dim to 100 at night and run at 800 in the morning is a considerably better product than one fixed at either.

CRI. Color Rendering Index, measuring how honestly a light source shows color against daylight. 95 CRI is very high and is the figure simplehuman publishes. Zadro publishes no CRI at all, which is a real gap if the mirror is for makeup.

Color temperature. Zadro publishes 6400K, a cool daylight white. simplehuman publishes no temperature at all for either model, which is an odd omission next to a 95 CRI claim.

Mounting. Countertop, cordless or wall-mounted, and in a rental this is the specification that decides what you can actually buy.

The 95 CRI question, and why it is the interesting number

CRI is worth understanding because it is the specification that separates a lit mirror from a light with a mirror attached.

A low-CRI source produces light with gaps in its spectrum. Colors that depend on the missing wavelengths look wrong — typically flat, or shifted. That is why makeup applied under cheap bathroom lighting can look completely different outdoors.

95 CRI means the light source renders color nearly as faithfully as daylight. simplehuman publishes it for both Sensor Mirrors, alongside “surgical-grade LEDs” and “Patterned micro-reflectors”.

If the mirror is for makeup, CRI matters more than lux and considerably more than magnification. If it is for tweezing and shaving, lux matters more. The wider lighted mirror comparison is here.

Counter space is the real constraint

Both simplehuman mirrors are published as countertop units that tilt back rather than wall-mounted. In a bathroom whose entire counter is six inches of ceramic beside the basin, that is a genuine cost.

The alternatives each have a catch. A wall-mounted arm needs anchors, which is the skip on this page for renters. A cordless mirror still stands on something, but at least it can be put away between uses.

If counter space is the binding constraint and you cannot drill, the cordless Zadro is the answer — it lives in a drawer and comes out when needed. The small-bathroom storage guide covers the wider problem.

Renter status, plainly

Three of the four products here rate Safe on our install rating: they stand on a surface and either plug in or take batteries. Nothing is fitted and nothing is undone.

The wall-mounted model is Owner-only, and it is the skip for that reason alone. Its optics are not the problem; four anchors in somebody else’s tile is.

A lit magnifying mirror is one of the cheapest genuine improvements available in a rented bathroom, precisely because the good options need nothing from the room at all.