The Best Bath Mirror Lighting - 2021
We looked at the top 10 Bath Mirror Lighting and dug through the reviews from 25 of the most popular review sites including and more. The result is a ranking of the best Bath Mirror Lighting.
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Our Picks For The Top Bath Mirror Lighting
- The Best Bath Mirror Lighting
- 1. MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights
- 2. PANGTON VILLA Dimmer & Power Supply Vanity Mirror
- 3. LPHUMEX Dimmable LED Vanity Mirror Lights
- 4. Chende Hollywood LED Vanity Mirror Lights
- 5. Vansky LED Vanity Mirror Lights Kit
- 6. Waneway Dimmable Makeup Vanity Mirror
- 7. ViLSOM Dimmer & Power Supply LED Vanity Mirror
- 8. TXENCEX Dimmable Hollywood Vanity Mirror Light
- 9. Pretmess Hollywood Vanity Mirror Lights
- 10. Golspark Dimmable Hollywood Style Lights
Versatile Adhesive LightsUse the MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights to customize any mirror or bathroom space.
Long-Lasting, SafeCount on the PANGTON VILLA Vanity Mirror to light up your makeup space for a long time.
Easy and DurableThe LPHUMEX Dimmable LED Vanity Mirror Lights are easy to install and adjust.
Soft, Adjustable LightsUse Chende Hollywood LED Vanity Mirror Lights to fit any space.
Why we recommend these bath mirror lighting?
Products Considered
Products Analyzed
Expert Reviews Included
User Opinions Analyzed
Our experts reviewed the top 10 Bath Mirror Lighting and also dug through the reviews from 25 of the most popular review sites including and more. The result is a ranking of the best of the best Bath Mirror Lighting.
DWYM is your trusted roduct review source. Our team reviews thousands of product reviews from the trusted top experts and combines them into one easy-to-understand score. Learn more.
The Best Overall
MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights
Our Take
These MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights offer limitless options for placement and appearance. They stick easily onto mirrors or frames and can change lighting modes to suit your needs. Their USB charger lets them power up from any device.
The Best Bang For Your Buck
PANGTON VILLA Dimmer & Power Supply Vanity Mirror
Our Take
The PANGTON VILLA Vanity Mirror consists of light strips that are easy to place. They can be cut as needed and the double-sided tape holds well. The strong battery ensures a long lifespan for these lights.
What other experts liked
What other experts didn't like
Our Bath Mirror Lighting Findings
MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights
What We Liked: These MOFUT USB Cable LED Vanity Mirror Lights offer limitless options for placement and appearance. They stick easily onto mirrors or frames and can change lighting modes to suit your needs. Their USB charger lets them power up from any device.
PANGTON VILLA Dimmer & Power Supply Vanity Mirror
What We Liked: The PANGTON VILLA Vanity Mirror consists of light strips that are easy to place. They can be cut as needed and the double-sided tape holds well. The strong battery ensures a long lifespan for these lights.
LPHUMEX Dimmable LED Vanity Mirror Lights
What We Liked: Place the LPHUMEX Dimmable LED Vanity Mirror Lights anywhere, thanks to their waterproof construction. The adjustable strips can be applied to most mirror frames or directly to the mirror itself. The smart touch dimmer makes adjusting the brightness easy.
Chende Hollywood LED Vanity Mirror Lights
What We Liked: The Chende Hollywood LED Vanity Mirror Lights are great for small spaces and any size mirror. The lights can be cut or moved to fit most any shape and the soft bulbs will illuminate without too much brightness. Smart switches allow for quick adjustment.
Waneway Dimmable Makeup Vanity Mirror
What We Liked: Industrial grade stickers make the Waneway Dimmable Makeup Vanity Mirror easy to put up and equally easy to remove. The carefully calibrated lights give off a warm glow without washing out your complexion. The transparent wires make the setup pleasing to the eye.
Our Bath Mirror Lighting Buying Guide
If there is one room in your house where you really want to get the lighting right, it’s your bathroom. Other rooms might have decor you want to accent (or hide) and different moods you want to set. But bad lighting in the bathroom won’t just highlight any mess in that relatively small space. It can also leave you looking worse for the rest of the day.
Specifically, we’re talking about the lighting around your bathroom mirror, the space where we get our first look at the face we want to show to the rest of the world. As such, it’s the place where we need focused lighting that minimizes shadows, with just the right amount of brightness and not too much heat. It’s a tall order, especially when you can expect your face to be so close to the lighting fixtures themselves.
There are a lot of options for the placing of those lights. If you already find the ceiling-mounted lights in your bathroom to be bright enough for general use, you might go with a simple, single light strip or bank of bulbs positioned horizontally above the vanity mirror. This will save space, and work perfectly fine as long as it’s not much brighter than the lighting in the rest of the room. For best results, you’ll want to mount those lights about 75 to 80 inches above the floor.
If you have the space and the funds, you might consider a better option no matter what the ambient light in the room is. That’s a pair of mounted scone lights on either side of the mirror. With or without an additional light overhead, these lights will combine to illuminate your face and cancel out shadows. These work especially well with taller or more rounded mirrors, and should be mounted at least 28 inches apart, 60 to 70 inches off the floor.
Don’t have a separate vanity mirror? There are plenty of lighting kits that can turn any mirror into a makeup nook fit for a Hollywood starlet. They typically consist of individual LED bulbs or lighting strips that attach by way of adhesive. They’re usually connected by thin wiring (hopefully transparent) and are sometimes powered by batteries. Whatever the shape of your mirror, you can attach them to the frame or just arrange them around the section of it that you’d like to use as a vanity. Just keep the same distance guidelines in mind that you’d use for an overhead light or wall sconces.
The next thing you’ll want to take into consideration is the type of bulb. The choice is more crucial than when deciding on a bulb for the closet or even the kitchen, because your face will be up close and personal with these lights most every day. Brightness is a major factor. You’ll want vanity lights that produce about 1600 lumens — enough to clearly illuminate your pores without giving you eyestrain. Mind you, that’s 1600 lumens total, not per bulb. As a general rule, a single incandescent 60 W light bulb produces 800 lumens, while a much more efficient LED bulb can generate that much light with 12 W. If you’d rather not do the math on a lighting rig with several bulbs, just make sure that it has a dimmer. You can always adjust it to suit your needs.
Brightness is an easily definable trait for a bulb, but for vanity lighting there’s an equally important one that’s harder to pin down: The CRI. That stands for Color Rendering Index, and it’s a measure of how well a light bulb reveals the color of the objects that it illuminates. That’s in comparison to natural sunlight in ideal conditions, which would have a perfect CRI score of 100. Light that distorts color relative to that would have a lower score: Flourescents measure around 60-80, incandescent bulbs can be a 50 or below, down to a score of 10 or less for candlelight. LED lights can carry a CRI of 90 or better, making them perfect for vanity mirrors.
There is also a color temperature rating, which is a number that reflects how warm or cool your light appears. Fittingly, it’s measured on the Kelvin scale — the lower the number, the “hotter” it appears. You’ll want to look for LED bulbs or incandescents that come in somewhere between 2800 and 3200K, which is on the warm end of the scale but not enough to over-accentuate reddish hues.
Finally, give a thought to the actual temperature of your light bulbs. Remember that you’ll be up close and personal with this mirror pretty frequently. No matter how cozy warm lights make your vanity feel, it’s hardly worth it if they’re causing you to sweat through your makeup. Once again, cool-running LED bulbs are a good choice in this regard.
DWYM Fun Fact
We humans take mirrors for granted, but the ability to recognize ourselves in one isn’t an inherent trait. It can take up to 2 years for children to realize that face in the glass is their own, and most animals never develop the self-recognition skill at all. Animals that are known to be able to see themselves in a mirror include elephants, bottlenose dolphins, magpies and most primates.
The Bath Mirror Lighting Tips and Advice
Maybe you’ve found a perfect light kit to turn you mirror into a vanity, but make a last check on the box before you buy. Are they specified as bathroom lighting? Some lights aren’t made to endure moisture on a long term basis, and that can spell disaster pretty quickly. Look for lights that are “wet listed” or have a “wet location” designation from UL or ETL. Those are independent testing laboratories certified with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and you can be reasonably sure they’ll stand up to your daily shower steam bath.
About The Author
As a professional writer for the past couple decades and a homeowner for the last seven, Tod Caviness has learned the hard way what vacuum cleaners will actually pick up dog hair and which plants will survive on a Florida patio. His favorite room: The office, with the kitchen a close second.