Antok Arched Floor Mirror vs Ikea Stave Mirror: Which Is Worth It?

I measured the corner of my bedroom three separate times before I sat down on the bed and admitted I was guessing. What I wanted was not complicated. After twenty seven years of getting up before daylight and dressing by whatever light the bathroom would give me, I wanted one tall mirror in the bedroom where I could see my whole self, shoes included, without standing on my toes or propping the closet door open. The Antok arched floor mirror is the one I ended up buying in January, and it is the one this whole comparison turns on. Before that, I tried the cheap version. I hung the little mirror from the back of the closet door on a nail and angled it toward the window, and it showed me from the collarbone down if I stood in exactly the right spot and held still. It also swung every time the furnace kicked on. After that came about a month of reading listings, one long look at my sister Donna's hallway, and more opinions than I asked for from people who had never lived with either mirror. So here is the comparison I wish somebody had handed me.

Short answer first, because you are probably standing in your own room with a tape measure right now. If you want a mirror that stands on the floor by itself, shows you head to toe, and makes a dim bedroom feel less dim without putting a single hole in the wall, the Antok arched floor mirror is the one I bought in January and the one I would buy again. If your problem is a narrow strip of wall in a hallway or beside a bathroom door, and you want to spend as little as you can get away with, the IKEA Stave mirror my sister has is the sensible pick and it does that job without complaint. Those are two different jobs. That is the whole comparison in one paragraph, and everything below is the why.

	Antok Arched Floor Mirror	IKEA Stave Mirror
Size	71 inches tall by 28 inches wide. You see your shoes and the top of your head at the same time.	Much narrower and shorter. You see most of yourself, not all of yourself.
How it stays up	Comes with a stand, so it stands free in a corner. Can also lean against a wall or be wall mounted.	Hangs flat on the wall. No stand, no leaning, no floor space used.
Floor space	Takes a corner or about two feet of wall, plus a little room to step back.	Takes none. The hallway stays a hallway.
Frame	Thin aluminum frame with a polished finish and an arched top.	Simple wood frame with a straight top. Warmer texture, plainer line.
Hanging it yourself	Possible, but it is heavy, and in my house that meant waiting for Gary and a second pair of hands.	Light enough that one person with a level can do it in an afternoon.
Moving it	Two people. I have not once moved it alone in ten months.	One person can lift it down and rehang it.
Glass	The listing describes the glass as explosion proof, which is their way of saying it is built to resist shattering.	Standard mirror glass in a wood frame.
Cost	Costs more. It is furniture, not a wall accessory.	Costs less. That is a real part of why people buy it.
Best for	A bedroom or dressing area where you get dressed start to finish every day.	A hallway, bathroom or closet wall where wall space is the only space you have.

What Each Mirror Actually Is

The Antok is 71 inches tall and 28 inches wide, with an arched top and a thin aluminum frame. The glass sits in the frame, the whole thing is made to be floor mounted, and it arrives with a stand so you can set it up freestanding. The listing also gives you two other options, wall mounting or leaning it against the wall, and I want to be plain about this, I have only used the stand. Ten months in, it is still standing on that stand in the corner opposite my bedroom window, and I have not put a single nail in the wall. It has a 4.4 star average across more than 3,200 reviews, which is about what I would have guessed from living with it.

What arrived was heavier than I expected and packed better than I expected. Gary carried the box in from the porch on a cold Saturday morning in January and set the mirror up on the stand, and nothing was cracked, chipped or loose. That is the part I worried about most, because a large piece of glass coming down a delivery truck is a gamble no matter who sells it, and I had already decided that if it came in pieces I was going to give up on the whole idea and go back to the closet door nail. It did not come in pieces. The stand holds it at a slight backward angle, which is the angle that keeps it from feeling like it is about to tip forward onto the carpet. I check it every few weeks out of habit. It has never needed adjusting, and it has never wobbled.

The Stave mirror is a different animal entirely. My sister Donna has one hanging in her hallway, flat against the wall between the bathroom door and the coat closet, and it has been there long enough that I stopped noticing it years ago. She hung it herself on a Sunday afternoon with a level she borrowed from a neighbor, and it has not shifted since. It is a rectangle with a straight top and a wood frame, plain and pleasant, narrower than mine by a good margin and shorter too. There is no stand. It does not lean. It hangs, and the floor underneath it stays clear, which in a hallway is the entire point. It is not trying to be a piece of furniture. It is trying to be a mirror on a wall, and it succeeds at that.

Ten months in, the thing I notice is not the arch. It is that I have not once had to stand on my toes to see whether my hem is straight.

Where Antok Wins

It wins on size, and size is not a small thing when you are getting dressed. At 71 inches by 28 inches, I see my hair, my collar, my hem and my shoes in one look, without stepping back into the middle of the room or tipping forward. My bedroom had only the bathroom mirror and a little one on the back of the closet door before this, and the difference is not decoration, it is function. The week it went up I stood in front of it with my winter coat on, looked at the hem, and realized I had been guessing at that exact question for years. If you wear anything you have to check from more than one angle, that full 71 inch length is the whole reason to buy a floor mirror instead of hanging a rectangle.

It also wins on the thing nobody talks about in listings: what it does to the light. Our house was built in 1978 and the bedrooms have never been bright. The front picture window is west facing, and by four in the afternoon in February the living room is golden while the bedrooms are already dim. This mirror sits opposite the bedroom window and throws that light back into the room, and the corner that used to feel closed off now looks open. And because it stands on its own stand, I got all of that without asking Gary to find a stud or patch a hole later. The explosion proof glass description on the listing matters to me too. I have a niece with small children who visit, and a big sheet of glass standing on a carpet is a thing you think about once somebody little is in the room.

Where the IKEA Stave Wins

It wins on floor space, plain and simple, and in some houses that decides the whole question. Donna's hallway is about four feet wide. A floor mirror with a stand would eat a corner of it and turn a walkway into an obstacle course, and she has a bench and two coat hooks in there already. The Stave hangs flat, takes up nothing, and the hallway stays a hallway. If your only candidate wall is beside a bathroom door, at the end of a closet, or in a narrow entry, a mirror that stands on the floor is not a better mirror, it is the wrong mirror.

It wins on money and on effort, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The Stave costs less, considerably less, and it is light enough that one person can hang it without waiting for a Saturday and a helper. Mine took Gary, a dolly and a fair amount of grunting to get up the steps, and I would not move it across the room by myself, not even two feet. Donna hung hers alone in an afternoon with a level and a pencil and was drinking coffee on the porch by three. If you want a mirror up on the wall by suppertime and you do not want to spend much, that is a real advantage and I would tell you so in my own kitchen.

How They Look in a Real Bedroom

Showroom photos do not tell you much, so here is what mine looks like in an ordinary room with bad light. The arched top softens the corner in a way I did not expect. My bedroom is all straight lines, a rectangle window, a rectangle dresser, a rectangle bed, and the curve at the top of that mirror is the only soft thing in the room. The thin aluminum frame keeps it from feeling heavy even though it is tall. In March I swapped the heavy winter bedding for a light quilt and moved the small side table six inches to the left, and the mirror still looked like it belonged there. It reads as light and a bit dressy without shouting, and it has looked right through every change I have made in that room since January.

One thing I did not think about until the first gray afternoon: the mirror picks up whatever is behind me when I stand in front of it, which is the bed and the window, so the reflection stays clean instead of showing a cluttered wall. Donna's Stave reads differently, and I mean that as a compliment. It is quieter. The wood frame blends into a hallway that is already full of wood, doors and trim and a bench, and nobody walking through stops to look at it. In a hallway, that is correct. You do not want a hallway mirror demanding attention when people are trying to find the bathroom. Hers looks like it was always there. Mine looks like I chose it. Both of those can be the right answer depending on the room, and I would not swap with her.

Who Should Buy Which

Buy the Antok if you get dressed in one place every morning and you want to see the whole outfit at once. Buy it if your bedroom is dim and could use a second window that does not need installing. Buy it if you rent, or if you have finally stopped wanting to patch nail holes, because the stand means the wall stays untouched. Buy it if you have a corner and somebody in the house who can carry 71 inches of glass up the steps without drama.

Buy the Stave, or something like it, if your space is a hallway, a bathroom wall, a closet door, or an entry where the floor has to stay clear. Buy it if you are hanging it yourself, if you want to spend as little as possible, or if the mirror is there for a quick check on the way out rather than for getting dressed start to finish. And if you are honestly not sure which one you are, do what I did in the end. Walk to the spot where the mirror will go and stand there. If you can step back two feet without hitting a bed or a door, you have room for a floor mirror. If you cannot, you already have your answer, and it did not cost you a thing to find out.