How to Set Up a Mirror for Dance Practice at Home

To set up a mirror for dance practice at home, hang it upright on a wall at right angles to your window, with the bottom of the frame about 15cm off the floor, and practise at least 1.2m back from the glass. It needs to be tall enough that the top of the glass sits halfway between your eyes and your fingertips with your arms straight up, and wide enough for half your arm span plus however far you travel sideways. One 200 x 100cm mirror does the height for most dancers. For travelling steps you need two side by side. We ray traced every setup below for dancers from 130cm to 185cm tall.

This guide is about dance: moving, jumping, turning and getting down to the floor in front of a mirror. For a mirror in a home gym, including yoga and pilates spots, see our home gym mirror guide. To hang two mirrors as one wall, our side by side installation guide has the level lines, gaps and fixings. Whether a mirror needs to be safety glass is covered in our safety glass guide.

What does a dance mirror have to show?

A dressing mirror only has to show you standing still. A dance mirror has to show you at the extremes: your fingertips with your arms overhead, your whole body at the top of a jump, and your feet and hands when you are down on the floor. It also has to keep showing you as you travel sideways.

One rule makes all of this predictable. In a mirror hung straight on the wall, the sight line to any part of your body meets the glass halfway, in height, between your eyes and that part of you. Your feet meet it at half your eye height. Your fingertips meet it halfway between your eyes and your fingertips. Sideways works the same way: a hand held out 80cm from your nose meets the glass 40cm to that side.

Distance drops out of the sum. We checked it with a ray trace at 0.8m, 1.5m and 3m, and the slice of you that a wall mirror shows is identical at all three. Stepping back shows more of the room behind you, not more of you.

How tall does a dance mirror need to be?

Find your height in the table for the heights the glass has to reach. We used typical adult proportions (eyes at about 93.6% of your height, fingertips about 1.28 times your height with both arms straight up, arm span about equal to your height), so treat the numbers as a close guide. The five minute test further down gives you your own.

Our calculation from the halfway rule. Tops are "at least", bottoms are "no higher than". Children's proportions differ a little from adults', so the 130cm row is approximate. In a plank or any floor move with your eyes about 40cm up, the bottom of the glass must be at 20cm or lower whatever your height.

Two things stand out. Arms overhead need far more height than standing does: a 175cm dancer needs glass up to about 169cm to see the top of their head, but 194cm to see their fingertips. And jumps are easier than people expect. At the top of a 30cm jump your feet are still in the mirror, because they are 30cm off the floor; what leaves first is your head, and even that stays in view on a 200cm mirror hung 15cm up for dancers up to about 190cm.

One move we didn't chase is a jump with both arms straight up. Your fingertips would reach about 241cm for a 165cm dancer, which is past a 2.4m ceiling, so in most rooms that move is off the table anyway.

How low should the bottom edge go?

The bottom edge is set by floor work, not by your height. Sitting on the floor with your legs out, an adult's eyes are roughly 70 to 85cm up, so the glass has to start at about 36 to 43cm or lower. In a plank or a stretch lying on your side, your eyes drop to about 40cm, and the glass has to start at 20cm or lower to show your feet.

Our frames cover about the first centimetre of glass, so we'd hang the frame at 15cm. That clears a typical skirting board and leaves a small margin for the plank. Hang it at 20cm and you gain 5cm at the top, but the glass then starts at about 21cm and a plank is right on the limit.

How wide does it need to be?

Width is where home dance mirrors usually fall short. The halfway rule works sideways too: to see both hands with your arms stretched out to the side, the glass has to reach halfway from your nose to each hand. With your arm span about equal to your height, that means glass half as wide as you are tall, centred on you, before you take a single step.

Every step sideways needs the same distance again in glass. So the width you need is half your height plus how far you travel. With your arms in, your body alone needs far less, about 22cm of glass for a 175cm dancer, plus the travel. Here is what that leaves in each of our setups:

Our calculation: glass width minus half the dancer's height (arms out), or minus half their shoulder width (arms in). A 155cm dancer gets about 10cm more travel with arms out in every row.

Where two frames meet you get a dark line about 2cm wide. It sits in the reflection directly opposite the join, so for work on the spot, stand in front of one mirror rather than the join. Our side by side guide covers hanging a pair so that line stays straight.

What each of our mirrors shows

Here is the ray trace for our three rectangular full length mirrors hung upright, and for the Zenith X on its own stand. "Up to" means the tallest dancer who keeps that move whole in the glass.

Our ray trace, same proportions as above; glass taken as about 1cm inside the frame all round. A pair shows the same heights as one mirror of the same model: it adds width, not height. The Lowen X is 220cm tall, so under a 2.4m ceiling we'd hang it about 10cm up, which needs a skirting board lower than that.

A stand changes one thing. We measured the Zenith X stand off our side on product photo: the mirror leans back about 4.1 degrees, and the footprint we measured, 27cm, matches the listing. A mirror tilted back shows a little more above you the further back you stand. So on its stand the Zenith X shows a dancer up to about 172cm with arms straight up from 1.5m back, and up to about 178cm from 2.5m. Floor work stays in view out to about 2.6m.

Which setup suits which dancer?

How should you lay out the floor?

Distance doesn't change what a wall mirror shows, so choose where you stand for space and safety.

• Draw a front line. A kick and a travelling step forward take you roughly a leg length plus a small step past where you started, about 1.1 to 1.3m for most adults. Put a strip of tape on the floor 1.2m from the glass and treat it as the front of your floor. Practise behind it.
• Face the mirror across the short side if you can. In a typical spare room of about 3.0 by 3.3m, with the mirrors on the 3m wall, the front line leaves about 2m of practice floor behind it.
• Put the window beside you, not behind you. With a window behind you, the mirror shows you as a dark shape against bright glass. Light from the side shows the line of an arm or a leg. So choose a mirror wall at right angles to the window.
• Clear the travel lane. Your sideways travel comes straight from the width table. Move furniture out of that lane and out of the space in front of your front line.

Where should the screen go?

More than half of the searches for "dance mirror" that showed one of our Google ads between April and September were people after a mirrored choreography video, not a mirror: about 1,330 of 2,350. That is how most people practise at home, with a tutorial on a screen beside their own reflection.

Put the screen on the mirror wall, just beside the glass, with its centre at about your eye height, so your eyes move sideways between the teacher and your reflection rather than down to the floor. Keep it out of the travel lane and behind nothing you might kick.

Then pick the right version of the video. When a teacher faces the camera, their right arm is on your left of the screen, while in your mirror your own right arm is on the right. A mirrored version flips the picture so the teacher and your reflection move the same way. Use the mirrored version when the teacher faces the camera, and the normal version when they are filmed from behind.

How do you fix a mirror in a room where people jump?

• Fix into the structure. Our 200 x 100cm mirrors weigh 28kg. On plasterboard, fix into timber, as our plasterboard guide explains. A garage practice space often has a block or brick back wall, and our concrete and brick guide covers drilling and plugs.
• Give the bottom edge something to sit on. In a room where people jump and kick, we'd also fit two small brackets or mirror clips under the bottom edge, screwed into timber, so the mirror rests on them as well as hanging from its fixings.
• Keep a stand or a lean for slow work. The Zenith X on its stand, or any leaning mirror, is fine for barre work, stretching and practice on the spot. For travelling, turning or kicking, hang it, or keep it well behind your front line. A leaning mirror in a practice room needs a restraint; our guide to securing a leaning mirror shows how.
• Know what the glass is. Our mirrors are annealed silvered glass, not certified safety glazing. A framed mirror hung on a wall at home sits outside New Zealand's safety glazing standard, as our safety glass guide explains, but a whole wall of mirror glued on as a lining, the way studios do it, becomes part of the building and needs certified safety mirror from a glazier. Either way, the front line is what keeps hands and feet off the glass.

Renting and can't drill? A freestanding mirror kept behind the front line is the simple answer, and our no drill mounting guide covers the options for walls.

The five minute test before you drill

You can size a mirror to yourself with a tape measure and a helper:

1. Stand side on to a wall. Have your helper mark your eye height (E), then the tip of your longest finger with both arms straight up (F).
2. Get into your lowest regular move, a plank or a floor stretch, and mark your eye height there (L).
3. Measure your arm span from fingertip to fingertip (S), and pace out how far you travel sideways in your longest combination (T).
4. The top of the glass must be at least (E + F) ÷ 2.
5. The bottom of the glass must be no higher than L ÷ 2.
6. The glass must be at least S ÷ 2 + T wide.

For example, a 162cm dancer with eyes at about 152cm, fingertips at about 207cm, a plank eye line of 40cm and 60cm of sideways travel needs glass from 20cm or lower up to at least 180cm, and at least 141cm wide. One Aldren X hung 15cm up covers the height, with glass from about 16cm to 214cm. For the width it takes two, and two Zenith X would also do it. On our mirrors the glass sits about 1cm inside the frame all round, so compare your numbers with the frame size less 1cm at each edge.

The mirrors in this guide

For tall dancers, the Lowen X at 220 x 120cm is our largest rectangle. Every size we stock is in our full length mirror collection, and if the reflection in another mirror has ever looked stretched, our guide to why you look different in different mirrors explains it.

Frequently asked questions