Design brief:
To make the stairs and landing area in a home appear bigger. To make a feature of a dull wall space and split level staircase.
Craftsmen / Designers: R.M. Quarmby and C. Jones of Glass Installations Ltd
Product used: Image “6” Mirrors
We were asked to design a mirrored wall for a house stair case and the brief was to install something simple and elegant with a frame to provide a decorative finish to a bare wall in the middle of a stair way. In the past we have designed mirrors for stairs as it’s a great place to provide a full length mirror to check posture, your outfit or any other reflection! It provides the illusion of more light in dark areas of a house or building design and can often make unused areas of buildings or homes appear bigger, creating the feeling of space.
On most occasions we work with architects to design decorative mirrored spaces, but in this instance we worked directly with the client. Quite often, as we provide both technical and design support we find we have to point out challenges the client or architect may not have established. These challenges could include safety aspects, access problems or cost implications. With this particular project we had challenges based on the access to work area based on the size of mirror the client wanted in one piece. We always advise for safety reasons the biggest single piece of mirror we are able to manufacture. This may be due to safety in our workplace or in this case access within a home does not lend to over-sized mirrors being able to be transported through small doorways, to we always find a solution, not just based on the safety or access aspect and cut a mirror down to size, but we look at the overall design.
In this and many cases the decorative mirror and home furnishings have to come into consideration, as the size and joins of the mirror were crucial to the overall look of the work. Our designers had already decided to use a simple antique gold framing to match the chandelier of the hall and they therefore added an inner framing design to match and overcoming the mirror size to be transported and maneuvered into position easily within the home setting. The overall size of the complete piece was 3.8m x 2m in pieces as you can see on the photos to include the inside frame which attracts the focus again to the wall, appearing to make the mirror and decorative item in the decor of the hall and landing area. We often design mirrors as focus pieces, rather than being for their general use of studio mirrors or dance mirrors. Please also see our gallery for interesting designs we also created for the Sixth Form College in Stoke-on-Trent and our featherweight designs in London’s prestigious Number One Hyde Park residences.
Mirrors can be used as a wonderful tool in unusual decoration in interior designers, architect’s designs or as mentioned previously we can work directly with the client using Glass Installations’ in-house designers, please contact us for more details on bespoke designs at sales@glassinstallations.co.uk