We’d like to get some opinions / experiences with:
Glass Sinks:
We are considering something like these sinks.
If you bought glass bathroom sinks, what are your opinions about them? What are their disadvantages? Would you buy them again? Any problems with cleaning, breaking, scratching, staining, etc.?
Lighted Mirrors:
Lighted mirrors, similar to these, do have a “wow” factor to them. But we don’t know how they would work over the long term. If you have lighted mirrors in your house, what are your opinions? Do they work well for you, or are they a problem for one reason or another? If you were to buy them again, what would you do differently? What features would you recommend and which would you pass on?
Former decorative plumbing salesman and bath remodeler here:
Glass sinks - most of them do not have an overflow hole. Which in and of itself is a handy feature, but more importantly, imho, is they provide an air-break for draining. If an air bubble gets trapped between the sink and the trap (and it will), they drain slowly. This in turn can lead to more soap residue to clean. Also, some local codes don’t allow non-overflow hole sinks.
As for lighted mirrors, that’s a personal preference. Myself, I like a classic framed mirror. Again, personal preference, but lighted mirrors scream “pimp my bathroom”, wow factor would become dated too soon.
Not sure your age, but lighted mirrors are AWESOME as you get older. Sconces do ok as well, but the last thing you want is overhead cans throwing downlight. I would say a glass sink depends on the hardness of your water. It will show deposits way more than porcelain.
Yes–the omnidirectional front facing light. It’s awesome. Plus it’s just nice light. We chose this for no good reason, but have been very pleased. We got a 30" x 72" which doesn’t seem to be available anymore. We hard-wired it to a switch.
I stay in a lot of hotels. Lighted mirrors are all the rage now in mid-upper range hotels. IMO in 10 years they will be very dated stylistically: “so 2020s”. In terms of factual durability I’ve never used one that failed to fully light, so you should be good there unless you buy the absolute cheapest Chinese knockoff you can find.
Functionally, they’re great for all the reasons @Tride suggests. As long as you’re ready to forgo dimming. I personally would much rather have dimmable bathroom lights. I hate waking up pre-dawn and the only option I have in the bathroom is total darkness or blazing blinding painful white/blue LED lighting. Give me old-fashioned incandescents turned down to just barely lit for a couple minutes to let my eyes wake up gradually. But I realize I’m a Neanderthal in wanting this now-obsolete feature of what we used to call civilization.
Dimmable LEDs have come a long way. We used Lithonia wafer LED. Super easy to install, cheap, great performance. You don’t want the mirror to be your only light. Caseta is super cool if you’re looking for smart controls, but that’s more of a whole-house thing. It installs like a standard switch.
