Galaxy Horizon Mirror Molding Cabinets

GH MIRROR MOLDING is $87.75. It is a profile made to frame flat glass, sold by the piece and cut to a mitred rectangle on site. The live list does not publish its stick length, the depth of its rabbet (the recess the glass sits in) or what it is milled from, so ask us for all three before you order glass or calculate a quantity.

The quantity is the frame perimeter plus the mitres. A 30-by-36-inch mirror has an eleven-foot perimeter before corner allowance, and a pair of mirrors over a double vanity doubles that. Because the frame will sit right above the vanity and will be compared with it every day, plan to cut each frame from as few sticks as possible, in order round the rectangle, so the four sides match. Fabuwood notes that stained parts vary in colour, and a frame is where four pieces are seen side by side at once.

This is the whole page in one line, and it is the habit to change. Spray the glass cleaner onto a folded microfibre cloth held away from the mirror, then wipe the glass. The frame never gets a direct spray, overspray never runs down into the joint between glass and wood, and nothing pools on the bottom rail.

The bottom rail of the frame is the one at risk. Cleaner sprayed onto glass runs down under gravity and collects where the glass meets the lower strip of the frame. On a stain, that is liquid sitting in a joint against a finished surface, and it is the place a frame first starts to look worn. Fabuwood’s care instruction for spills is to blot rather than wipe, so if cleaner does reach the frame, press a dry cloth onto it rather than dragging a wet one along it.

Then think about what is in the bottle. Most glass cleaners contain ammonia or alcohol, which is fine on glass. Fabuwood’s guidance is mild cleaners only on the cabinet finish, so keep the glass cleaner for the glass and use a barely damp cloth with a drop of dish soap for the frame, dried straight away. The cabinet care guide has the full routine.

• Spray the cloth, never the mirror, when the frame is wood.
• Wipe the glass from the centre outwards and stop short of the frame, then finish the edge with a dry corner of the cloth.
• Clean the frame separately: a damp, soapy, well-wrung cloth, then a dry one. Once a week is plenty.
• If cleaner reaches the frame, blot it dry. Do not wipe it along the rail.
• No abrasive pads, no melamine erasers and no ammonia on the frame itself.

The second thing a bathroom mirror frame gets is steam. After a shower the mirror fogs, condensation beads on the glass and runs down into the same bottom joint the cleaner does. The fix is ventilation and a quick wipe, not a different frame. Run the extractor fan during the shower and for a while afterwards, and dry the lower edge of the glass with a cloth when you dry the rest of the room.

There is also a fitting detail that helps. Where the glass sits in the rabbet, a thin bead of clear silicone along the bottom edge seals the joint so water runs off the frame instead of into it. Ask your installer to seal the bottom rail only and to leave the sides and top dry, so the glass can still breathe.

A bathroom is often the room with the least daylight and the strongest artificial light, and the lights are usually either side of the mirror or directly above it. That puts the frame closer to the light source than any other wood in the house. A homeowner on Houzz who has this finish described it as looking "cold or dull" on a cloudy day and warm in the sun, and a designer in the same discussion said it can read warm or cool depending on what is around it.

In practice that means the frame can look a touch different from the vanity below it simply because it is lit differently: brightly and from the side, while the vanity front sits in shadow under the counter. Warm-white bulbs, around 2700–3000K, keep the frame on the warm side of its range; cooler bulbs push it towards grey. Before committing, hold the door sample ($35.00) up at mirror height with the bathroom lights on, not in the kitchen.

A mirror frame is four strips meeting at four forty-five-degree mitres, and each strip’s grain runs along its length. At every corner, one strip’s grain meets the other’s at a right angle. Wood moves across its grain more than along it as the humidity changes, so in a room that swings from dry to steamy twice a day, a plain glued mitre can open into a hairline at the inside corner.

On a painted frame that hairline would be filled and painted over. On a stain it shows as a dark line at each corner. The answer is in the joint, not the finish: glue the mitres and reinforce each one with a small spline, a biscuit or a corner fastener from the back, so the corner is held shut. Tell the installer before they cut, because it changes how they cut.

Then take the four strips from one stick in sequence, top, right side, bottom, left side, so each corner joins two pieces that grew next to each other. If a stick has one end that is a touch lighter than the other, put that end at the bottom corners, which sit below eye level, and keep the better-matched end for the top pair, which you look straight at.

Order the mirror molding with the vanity, not later. The two are seen together every morning, and Fabuwood’s warranty is plain that replacement parts "may not match display samples and/or existing cabinets". A frame ordered a year after the vanity comes from a different production run and may sit a shade away from it.

Size the frame to the vanity, not to the glass you happen to have. Common practice is a mirror a few inches narrower than the vanity top, centred over the basin. Over a double vanity, two mirrors each centred on a basin usually look better than one very wide frame, and they are easier to clean because each piece of glass is within arm’s reach.

Those are planning numbers. Confirm the stick length with us, allow for the corner mitres, and add a spare stick so each frame can come from as few lengths as possible. The vanity buying guide has the widths.

The same molding frames a mirror in a hallway or a dressing area, or a mirrored panel on the back of a bar. Away from a bathroom there is no steam, but the cleaning habit still applies. Anywhere glass is cleaned with a spray bottle, spray the cloth.

It is also the right way to frame a mirror over a dry bar or coffee station built from the same cabinets, where a mirror above the counter bounces light around a dim corner. For the parts that go with it, see the vanities and the decorative accessories. The frame itself is priced on the mirror molding page, and for the rest of the collection our free design service will draw the vanity wall with the mirror on it.