Looking at all the photos I can find of baths, especially small ones, I find few of them have lights on both sides of the mirror. I understand it gives better light, but I'll have to give up too much wall space to do that. This is the hall bath, for guests and me, and I'm planning to put a mirrored medicine cabinet over the sink.

Getting older and don't see all that well, so I could use the light. Can I get along okay without the side lights?

I've decided that the sconce on the side wall is a bad idea because it would reflect in the mirror--painful to my eyes. Looking at Lowe's today the three light fixtures seemed to put out plenty of light. They had CFU bulbs in all of them. I'm thinking now to just mount one of those above the mirrored cabinet over the sink. With another ceiling fixture in the middle of the room, closer to the tub/shower (3 ft away from it per code?) I'm thinking this will be adequate lighting for a 5.5' by 9.75 ft. room.

Does this sound okay? Or, do I actually need to learn how to compute footcandles and use those guidelines to decide on my lighting??