Magnifying Mirrors—love them or hate them they are becoming a regular necessity especially these days. If you’ve gotten to the place where you can’t apply eyeliner to your lash line or you’ve repeatedly stabbed your eyeball with a mascara wand, it’s time to look into magnifying mirrors. Or if you take a second look at your new red lipstick in the harsh daylight of car visor mirror and realize that particular shade of blue venom red was a big mistake, you might also need to add a variable lighting feature to that mirror.
For some of us, the realities of less than 20/20 vision are a painful shock and for others, glasses and contact lenses to correct our vision, have always been a part of the party. Either way, bells sounding an alarm or an all clear, non-distorting magnifying mirrors can and will make a big difference in how we view our …worldview.
Jen Sincero, of “You Are A Badass” book fame, suggests that greeting your morning image in the mirror with a “hello beautiful” instead of an “ugh” will be ever so helpful in maintaining a happy life. Hmmm …but it is interesting to note that a look in a10x mirror can have an even more proactive effect. You get up in the morning, and first face your full-frontal, sleepy face in a big-ass mirror while you brush your teeth and contemplate the merits of caf or decaf? But if you take that same face to the much smaller but mighty magnifying mirror you are confronted with just a part of your face and a more manageable “oh I need to tweeze” or something beyond a self-compliment that you can and actually will do something about.
Choosing the right level of correction is key, and finding the exact spot for your newfound magnifying “friend” is paramount. Do not let your handyman mount a mirror to his specifications, no matter how much you trust him. An un-level playing field for a mirror will make you insane (trust us as we have spent years craning a neck or two to catch a barely-there side view of our chignon.)
Confronted with a large number of options, a recent field trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond was a literal eye opener. As for choosing a level of magnification, it isn’t that simple, because what helps you see the most, might actually prove the worst choice for your personality type. If you are a realist and won’t turn the gift of seeing every enlarged pore or stray hair into a diving expedition with tweezers in hand, then a 10 – 15k magnification will be fine. But, if you are a prone to obsession, that level of clear-eyed scrutiny might backfire as you tweeze your eyebrows into non-existence and a 5x magnification might be just enough reality for you to handle.
Lighted mirrors now come in a variety of sizes, prices, battery types and light varietals. Doing your makeup in a nighttime environment of incandescent light, when you are actually going to work where natural light prevails (wouldn’t that be lovely?) might not produce the desired natural results. LED light, technology that is fast becoming the gold standard for long-lived bulbs and replicating natural light is now readily available.
All manner of vanity top, wall mounted and even though we don’t love them, hand held models are there for the shopping. and the schlepping. They also make a great little girlfriend gift. 15 x travel mirror
i Home developed a 1x/7x double sided LED mirror that has a bluetooth speaker so that you can listen to your favorite music while you get ready to go out on the town. Party on sisters!
Shop our favorite magnifying mirrors below:
All of our recommendations are curated by Susan & the In The Groove editorial team. In some, but not all cases, we receive a small commission for leading you to what, how and where to buy all this wonderful stuff.
