Would you put in a new bathroom without tiles?

[PareyMortas]

We have to strip out the bathroom in our new house and are looking for ways to save money without compromising too much on design. I've seen a few images on Pinterest of bathrooms without tiling and I'm thinking this could work and obviously save us on tiles and tiler. Although I think we would need to tile in the shower, but it's obviously a much smaller area.

What do you think? Can it work, would it just look cheap?

My bathroom in a rented house has very few tiles, just painted walls. There's a 2 layer row of tiles around the bath and 1 layer above the wash basin, about 30 tiles in total. It seems fine.

There's a mirror immediately above the wash basin tiles which acts as a splashback as well as being useful.

Does it look like it was done on the cheap or a design decision Jan?

Don't do it. We tried to save money by having about 5 foot all round and then the shower bit. All the paint fell off within three years.
I was very lucky to match the tiles and they are now up to the ceiling!

PS 2DDs!

I loathe tiles, I think they make rooms feel really cold. In my last house we had tongue and groove panelling up to half height, then bathroom paint above that. It didn't peel. Or grow mould. Or anything. You can also get bathroom wallpaper. In my new bathroom we will be having panelling again and paint. Although the shower room is getting tiled floor to ceiling obvs.

It might make sense to install a little extractor fan though, they're about £20 from what I remember of the screw fix catalogue. Pretty easy DIY job so long as you can access your ceiling via the loft.

Does it look like it was done on the cheap or a design decision Jan?

Hmm. It looks fine. Quite plain. But that may be as it's beige paint and all white fittings. It was done around 3 years ago. I'm sure it was done to save money not a design decision. I think tiling would probably look better TBH. Depends partly on the colours. I wouldn't suggest beige paint with a white bathroom suite.

we are about to tile some of our bathroom and I was only going to tile a bit above the basin and around the bath/shower. the loo doesn't need it dies it?

you can get away with not many tiles can't you, just not none?

T&G looks great in bathrooms and is V cheap and easy to put up! Gets my vote !

I have a tile less bathroom. We couldn't afford tiles at the time. It looks ok. And we haven't had peeling paint or mould. But I wish we had tiles, I love tiles.

We have gone for minimal tiling. There are the same tiles on the floor and up the shower walls, also skirting and windowsill. We didn't do it to save money and I doubt it did. The walls were so damaged by ripping off the old tiles that they needed re plastering and skimming to get them good enough for paint.

I think it looks great. And I love having a dramatic paint colour, when I get sick of it it'll be easy to change.

Our bathroom is tile free. We have tongue and groove and paint. It's easy to update when we want to, and no grout to clean!

I don't know how quickly you need to do it, but Tesco voucher exchange covers Topps Tiles so that could be a help in the area you did want to tile. If you wanted to tile just the shower area that would maybe work out at about 8sq meters, depending on your shower. You get £15 for every £5 voucher, so it can make quite a difference, although not sure whether the exchange runs all the time.

I don't think it would look cheap at all - have a look round pintrest or here for some inspiration.

Personally I think floor to wall tiles do not look good in very small bathrooms and plain painted wall looks better.
Get the correct bathroom paint.
Make sure bathroom is well ventilated.
And yes people do still have bathrooms that look like that.

OP will you not need to get the walls skimmed/plastered? You might find that will offset the saving made by not having tiles unfortunately.

My friend's house has very minimal tiling and it was designed by a proper fancy pants interior designer - it looks great!

If you are just going to paint- make sure you prep the wall by painting with a mixture of dedcorators PVA and water. Stops your paint peeling when it get steamy.

we have a shower over the bath so tiled above the bath with plain white tiles from a diy store (think the tiles cost about £30!). then the rest of the bathroom is painted tongue and groove with white walls above. It looks simple and elegant, we can change the colour by painting the panelling whenever we like.

I should have added, we took the old tiles off the windowsill and have used white waterproof windowboard.

The house we've just moved into has only got tiles in the showers.
The main bathroom has T&G half way up with Paint above. The shower room has wallpaper (outside the shower).
Both look nice, expensive & well designed but are going to be replaced as they are not to my style & I'm rejigging the layouts.

I've never had tiles. Just painted walls, oak floor, roll top bath etc. it's always been fine. But the room is never steamy. There's no shower and we have big sash windows. I love my bathroom.

A huge bathroom with just a bath wouldn't need tiles. A tiny room with a shower would (however good the ventilation).

Probably depends on the size of room.

T&G can look great but sometimes in a smaller room you can get the log cabin look (not good).