How to Choose and Use Designer Bathroom Tile

Tips for adding fun and functional bathroom tile to your home

Tile is a favorite material for bathrooms, and for good reason. Tile can stand up to wet, steamy conditions without warping or splitting like wood, developing mold or mildew like carpet, or staining like drywall. It’s easy to clean and comes in a huge variety of styles and colors, so as long as you choose a high-quality tile, you can enjoy a stunning bathroom design for many years to come. Here’s a bit of advice on how to choose and use bathroom tile for different applications.

Bathroom Floors

Ceramic, porcelain, and even marble tiles are all popular choices for bathroom floors. Glass tiles are generally too slippery. Make sure you choose a tile that is hard and durable enough to withstand foot traffic. A hardness rating of three or above should be sufficient. If you don’t like the cold feeling of tile underfoot, consider adding some accent rugs or, for a real indulgence, install radiant heating under your tile floor.

Bathroom Walls

Bathroom walls are a great place to showcase decorative tile of virtually any kind. There are lots of ways to add tile to a wall, from covering the entire wall with mosaic glass tile to adding a chair rail or ceiling molding made from decorative tile liners.

Bathroom Counters & Backsplashes

While tile bathroom counters are somewhat rare, tile backsplashes are more common. They’re a great way to prevent water and flecks of toothpaste from damaging the paint on the wall behind the sink. All kinds of tile are easy to clean, and you can extend your backsplash as high up the wall as you want, maybe even creating a border around a mirror.

Shower Enclosures

Tiling the shower enclosure has been a bathroom design staple for many years. Not only is it practical, it also offers an excellent way to experiment with tile design. Some bathrooms even feature huge decorative mosaics depicting waves or sea creatures or even abstract designs on the walls of the shower enclosure or tub surround. Glass tile is especially popular in shower enclosures right now.

Tips to Stretch Your Budget

If you’re on a budget, consider choosing an inexpensive, basic, and neutral tile to cover most of the bathroom surfaces you want tiled. Then, you can focus on using high-end designer tiles as accent pieces. This will help you get a designer look for the bathroom without breaking your budget.