Having an easily accessible mirror in your living space is a great boon, especially when you need to get ready for an outing. However, you also need to make sure that you can safely hang it up without causing accidental wall damage. For this reason, one might ask, “Can you hang a mirror with command strips?”
While you can, indeed, hang a mirror with command strips, you have to be sure that your mirror isn’t too heavy because command strips can only carry a certain weight. You also have to make sure your hanging surface is prepared beforehand.
In this article, I’ll explain how to safely use command strips for hanging a mirror and how to properly prepare your surfaces for command strips. By the end of this article, you’ll know all the ins and outs of setting up your living space for hanging your mirror with these sturdy strips.
Preparing Your Walls for Command Strips
Before deciding on where to set up your hanging mirror, you’ll want to ensure that not only will it be in a visually pleasing place but that your command strips will be stable.
Be sure to confirm that your desired surface will hold command strips because while the strips are sturdy, they won’t stick on everything.
Command strips won’t stick to every surface in your home. The strips can go on most smooth surfaces, such as painted walls, tile, wood, and metal. However, avoid putting them on wallpaper, which is too thin for placement and is bound to tear.
You’ll also want to avoid putting your strips on any sort of textured surface, such as concrete. Because textured surfaces have natural bumps, they won’t hold command strips, and any items placed on them will inevitably fall off.
Also, never try to use command strips on any outside surfaces. While it would certainly be nice to have a mirror outside, weather conditions would ruin your strips and likely cause your mirror to fall.
Something else to keep in mind is that you’ll want to carefully choose where exactly on your surface you’re planning on hanging your mirror. While command strips are convenient, you still have to line them up to avoid a wobbly, unbalanced hanging mirror.
To align them, feel free to (without removing the adhesive lining) take out your strips and line them up on the wall. You’ll want at least four or more, depending on the size and weight of your mirror.
Measure your mirror and the distance between the strips. It might be tedious, but this step will act as a bit of insurance that will save you any frustrations while applying the strips to your mirror and surface.
Also, when planning on where to place your command strips, keep in mind that you have to avoid placing them on freshly painted surfaces. For any surface covered in a fresh layer of paint or any other sort of treatment like a varnish, you’ll have to wait a few weeks before selecting the surface as the spot for your strips.
Unfortunately, the command strips won’t stick to any surface still wet with paint or any other treatments. To avoid any potential issues, it’s best to choose a spot in your living space that you know won’t prevent your command strips from being stable.
How to Decide on Which Command Strip to Buy
Because there are multiple kinds of command strips available for use, it can be confusing to decide which one to purchase for a mirror. For this reason, 3M provides a handy online weight-comparison chart for its command strip products.
3M’s products range from 1 to 8 lbs (0.45 to 3.63 kg). Keep in mind that if your mirror is particularly heavy, an easy fix with command strips is to purchase multiple of the heaviest-holding types.
For example, let’s say that you’re trying to hang a 20 lbs (9 kg) mirror. Your best bet is to buy at least 3 of the 8 lb (3.63 kg) command strips. In terms of safety, you always want to overestimate rather than underestimate when pairing command strips with heavy-hanging objects.
The worst-case scenario here is trying to set up a particularly heavy-hanging mirror with an inadequate amount of command strips for support. Unfortunately, this can be a safety hazard and can also cause damage to your walls.
This is why it’s also essential to check that your command strips are stable before proceeding with hanging your mirror. If the command strips haven’t latched onto the wall, they could easily fall off and take the mirror with them.
While buying a bunch of command strips won’t necessarily be cheap, the price is worth it when you consider the damage other cheaper methods will do. Hammering nails into your wall or other forceful methods might cost you less, but at the same time, they’ll cause holes that will need to be dealt with later.
How to Hang a Mirror Using Command Strips
Here comes the fun part, setting up your command strips to hang your mirror.
Thankfully, the directions involved for command strips don’t include too many steps. One of the most crucial ones, however, is making sure that you’ve properly cleaned your desired surface before placing any strips.
Follow these steps to set up command strips properly:
1. Clean the Surface
For cleaning your surface, use a bit of rubbing alcohol and light cloth. This will remove any dust or other small nuisances that can prevent command strips from properly sticking.
It’s crucial that you use rubbing alcohol. Never use water for command strip prep. Water and other typical cleaners will create a sticky, damp mess that will prevent your command strips from ever adhering to the surface.
Once you’ve wiped down your surface and allowed it to dry, you can take out your command strips.
2. Fold the Strips Together and Press Them to Your Mirror
With hanging command strips, the trick here is to fold them together so that you’ll have a front and back adhesive side. Think of it as folding a piece of stick tape for smaller items.
Then, remove the paper lining so that you can apply the adhesive side to the back surface of your mirror. The trick to remember here is that you’ll need to press down on the adhesive for a few seconds to ensure that it’s sticking properly.
3. Remove the Adhesive Liner and Press Mirror Down Firmly
Once you’ve ensured that the strips have adhered to the back of your mirror, you can take off the other adhesive liner. Choose carefully where you want to place the mirror, line up the spots where your command strips are, and press firmly for at least 30 seconds.
It’s crucial that you patiently wait at least 30 seconds in this step. If you don’t spend 30 seconds pressing down on the strips, they might not fully adhere to your surface.
4. Take the Mirror Off the Strips
After spending 30 seconds pressing down, gently remove your mirror from the bottom up, taking it off of the strips. This step will ensure that the strips are fully prepared.
While this might seem redundant, you’ll need to press down on each of your command strips on your surface for 30 seconds each. By doing this, you’ll guarantee that the strips won’t have any issue sticking to your surface.
5. Realign the Strips
Once the strips are stable, you’ll need to wait 1 hour before this step. Once an hour has passed, you can now realign the strips on the back of your mirror with the strips on the wall, carefully making sure that they’re matched.
Feel free to wait longer than an hour, especially if your mirror is a particularly heavy one. But no matter what, avoid rushing this process before an hour has passed by to prevent any unfortunate mishaps.
And that’s it! Congratulations on successfully hanging up your mirror with your command strips.
Removing Command Strips After Use
Thankfully, removing command strips is likewise an easy process. So long as you carefully remove them per the directions, there won’t be any damage on your chosen surface.
- To safely remove them, first gently take your mirror off of the strips from the bottom up as before.
- Next, look for the release tab on your strips. The trick to taking these off is to press down on the strip while carefully pulling the release tab straight down, not towards you.
- Give it a few seconds, and the release tab will pop off of your surface without causing any harm.
Remember, don’t rush this removal process. Doing so would cause the adhesive to get yanked off, which could lead to unfortunate surface damage. Patience is key when removing command strips.
In Conclusion
Using command strips to hang a mirror is easy to do but also involves knowing beforehand how many strips you’ll need for effectiveness. So long as you know how much your mirror weighs and which type of command strips to purchase, you’ll have no issues setting up a mirror in your home.
Besides using them for your mirrors, you can also use command strips for a wide variety of other objects. These nifty tools allow for a great deal of easy DIY home customization.
