Beautiful & Easy Faux Mercury Glass DIY Mirror Tutorial

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If you have any glass you’d like to make into antique-looking mirrors I’ve got the tutorial for you! We’ve made easy faux mercury glass DIY mirrors and they’ve helped solve a major storage problem in our dining room. We made hidden storage where once there was none by turning glass into mirror.

Our entire main floor has been begging for more storage – HIDDEN storage – not more open shelves. I admire artfully arranged open shelving – in moderation. (We even added these DIY kitchen open shelving to our tired old kitchen.)

But, some stuff is just too ugly and utilitarian to display. That’s the exact stuff we needed a place for.

I recently shared our painted hutch makeover – this DIY apothecary cabinet stores so much – and it’s all behind doors.

But it wasn’t always that way.

This is the top half of our hutch, before:

making glass cabinet doors into mirrors mercury glass — You can see our hutch is mostly glass – so without some intervention, all our junk would be on display.

I needed a solution that would keep the interest and sparkle of the glass, but not constantly declare our affection for liquor, plastic dodads and flashy covered cookbooks.

The solution turned out to be easy: DIY antique looking faux mercury glass mirrors!

Faux Mercury Glass DIY with spray paint etc — This was see-through glass! Now’s it’s opaque antique-looking mirror.

And it was so easy!

We made these faux mercury glass mirrors and we only needed to buy one item (this Glass Spray Paint). The rest was already under our kitchen sink!

This Mercury Glass DIY could be the easiest project we’ve ever done – with a huge beautiful impact. I knew the effect would be lovely but wasn’t sure exactly how to achieve it. We started by learning the basics in this post from Shine Your Light. But first, maybe you’re wondering…

What is Mercury Glass?

Mercury glass is an ages-old decorative silvered glass. It doesn’t contain mercury – though it did at some point, hence the name. Thankfully the use of mercury was stopped because it’s toxic.

Mercury glass is made in a complex double-walled glass method, which is beyond my expertise to even explain. You can find out more here. What I do know is mercury glass is beautiful.

How do you make fake mercury glass? First you gather the simple supplies…

Faux Mercury Glass DIY Supplies:

Clean glass object
Krylon Looking Glass spray paint
A spray bottle
White vinegar
Water
Clean rag
Painters Tape – this is the only one we use (we learned the hard way)

How to DIY Mercury Glass Mirrors

1. Clean your glass

You will want to clean your glass in the years to come – the paint finish won’t make that easy – so make sure you paint the inside of your class (or the underside). Then you can clean the mirror as normal and your finish will last longer.

Before beginning, clean your glass very well to remove all stickiness, streaks or debris. (See end for how we learned from making this mistake!)

2. Prep your area

how to prepare to make Mercury Glass DIY — Cover surfaces.

With good quality painters tape, tape off any part you don’t want to be painted.

3. Prepare your Water-Vinegar spray

In a spray bottle, Mix ½ white vinegar and ½ water.

The mottled effect is made with the water/vinegar droplets. This mixture prevents the spray paint from sticking in some areas and creates a stippled, antique glass look