Marble! Anyone got thoughts/advice/experience?

[WoolyMammoth55]

Hi all,

In the absolute thick of our house refurb at the moment and the current conundrum is the bathroom walls. I'd been given the hard sell on shower panels by our contractor but having seen them in the flesh I can't live with that much plastic - I do understand so practical etc but I'm a nut about texture and just can't do it!

So I think we will cover the vast majority with large format 30 x 90cm white gloss tiles with minimal seams of mould-resistant durable grout.

Then I saw this lush image of a marble splashback and now can't get it out of my head! It ticks all the boxes for me - texture so gorgeous, organic, beautiful...

The closest I've found so far is this Nova Carara tile from Premiere Stone, which I saw in a showroom and is jaw-droppingly nice. www.premier-stone.co.uk/natural-stone-tiles/marble

So my questions are:

• anyone used marble on the walls before? Any tips, tricks, feedback?
• I'm thinking because it's not a heavy-traffic area we'll be ok for stains - worst it should be up against is toothpaste and soap! - but am I being optimistic?
• and lastly - the dream would really be a big 10mm thick single slab rather than the tiles... Anyone got any ideas how one goes about sourcing that kind of specialist thing? Will it be 10x the price??

Really up for feedback so please do chime in if you've got thoughts :)
Thanks all!
X

Real marble looks beautiful. Definitely a step up from plasticky shower panels. Issues are that it can stain and would need fairly regular resealing. No whacking bleach on it.

Have you though about using porcelain. There are some really good marble copies. The slightly more expensive ones do look better. Porcelain can come in big slabs to cover a wall in a panel or two. Or large format tiles. Can also be thinner than that size of marble so lighter.

Looks like you don't want one with two much veining. Porcelain tiles like vita by ape grupo, rivoli by porcelanosa or luni by artisans of devizes may suit. Marazzi have loads of different types of marble copied. Or lapacida have a good selection on their website.

*lapicida

Thanks @nomdeguerrrr! Really grateful for the advice.

Have you got any ideas who sells the large slabs of porcelain to cover a wall? That sounds like a great compromise and if I know what to look for I might be able to view some over the weekend.
X

Lots of tile shop will do extra large panels which might cover a wall in a couple of panels. Often they 'bookmatch' so it looks like two pieces of the same marble block put together to give a symmetrical design. There are a couple of examples on the lacipida website (@£150 + per square metre). Other on Mandarin stone etc.

The other alternative is to go for a modern thin porcelain that you might normally see on kitchen worktops. Dekton, laminam etc. Going for really massive porcelain (or marble) is always going to be an expensive option. If you go for it, get someone who knows what they are doing to fit it.

The other (cheaper) option is to go for tiles and have thin grout lines as you initially suggested. Rectified tiles with a clean edge are best for this.

I've just come down from trying to clean my bathroom marble vanity top the previous owners put in. So far I've spent nearly £50 on special cleaning materials. Nothing will shift the mystery brown stain or the etch where something was left sitting on it.

I'm only cleaning it to sell the horrible thing.
IMO marble is a natural, soft, soluble limestone rock. I can't imagine it will hold together in a 10mm x 90cm sheet. Once upon a time it was a clean, cleanable surface for washstands and luxury bathrooms. It doesn't seem to be proof against modern showers, limescale, toiletries and cleaning products.

There are excellent high quality porcelain marble effect tiles available: make your life easy is my recommendation.

I would not use marble in a shower. Behind a sink yes, shower no. Seen too many pictures of staining or spalling in marble showers (they are popular in the US).

Second the suggestion of ultra large marble style porcelain tiles. You can get them up to 3.2m x 1.8m size and bookmatched as pp said. Marazzi make some decent ones as do Atlas Concorde (sold via Minoli). Bear in mind you will need an excellent tiler for handling these sizes as they will be difficult to cut, get upstairs and fit - and if one breaks that’s a minor disaster as you won’t have spares.

We considered these large format tiles but In the end we went for neutral coloured large matt tiles in the shower and marble behind the sink. No regrets

Oh @NotMeNoNo I feel your pain! Sorry :/

Hi @minipie, yes I'm only considering it for a panel behind the sink and loo - 120cm high by 135cm wide. Shower will be white gloss and same around the bath.

If I can't find/afford a large porcelain option then my hunch is I'll end up going for the marble tiles - so will it look weird if I pair those with the large-format white tiles? Would a smaller white gloss or a pattern look better?

Ha ha there are days when I'm so overwhelmed by this whole project! AARGH! Thank you all for the advice
X

Behind the loo, surely that's an even more aggressive environment?
Make sure you invest in the proper Lithofin sealing and cleaning products. I'm sure they would be great if used from new.

You definitely want large tiles in the shower to avoid too much grout. What about either a) large format marble look tiles in the shower plus smaller white gloss tiles on the splashback and loo
b) large format white tiles in the shower plus marble mosaic tiles or marble look porcelain mosaic tiles behind sink and loo

Marble or marble effect can sit happily alongside other tiles. But I would be very cautious of using a white minimally veined marble alongside a white gloss ceramic. You risk it looking like you've ran out of one and filled in with the other. It could look good if you get it spot on but it would fill me with the fear.

If you do it, make sure that the whites in each work okay alongside each other. 'White' covers a multitude of different shades and tones.

Soft porous, very over rated go for a good composite instead.

What about an acrylic panel? Has the same texture as glass. You can get custom ones with any design and they might do marble effect. Would look better than tile I think.

Cross posted with minipie. Changing the scale as suggested could look great. As could shape or texture. They don't want to look too similar but do want to be simpatico

Yep agree with nomdeguerre about needing the whites to match! We couldn’t and so we have large warm mid grey tiles in the shower (rather than white) and marble mosaic behind the sink

Large rectangular porcelain tiles give a good effect - can't really go wrong with Porcelanosa in their 40% off sale. You will find something you love.

A bathroom company advised us against marble anywhere near a loo unless we wanted to seal it monthly or have yellow stains.

I once stayed in the Dorchester hotel, never seen so much marble in one place as the bathroom. And they are cleaned every day.

I once lived in a house with marble floors and almost broke my neck from slipping on wet marble.

My in laws had marble in their previous bathroom. It looked very luxurious but it did stain. Particularly with limescale type marks.

As they loved the look but not the durability they have got massive very realistic marble tiles in their new house. They are from a factory called Iris FMG and are really beautiful. www.irisfmg.com They bought them from Tile Expert and were really not a ridiculous price.

Forgot to say I think they got 2m x 1m sized tiles .

Many thanks to you all for the thoughts and advice! We went to Porcelanosa today and I agree their stuff is lush and the 40% sale is BARGAIN-osa. But then I went back and looked at the real marble again and it's just so sexy and luminous - not really comparable to the design-printed-on-porcelain look, which is lovely but a different thing.

Cost-wise, I think it's not more pricey to do the small area in real marble. Then I could do the Porcelanosa white gloss through the rest... I'm VERY tempted to just go for it and re-seal every few months... Ha ha though as expecting DS2 in January so perhaps this is just plain mad and avoidant?!?

Anyone in the "definitely not behind the loo" camp - it's a close-coupled loo, not back to wall - honestly don't recall EVER having to clean pee off the wall behind the loo thus far in my life - does DH have extraordinary aim, or is this more an issue with back to wall setup?? For some reason this isn't putting me off as much as it should! DS1 currently pees sitting down (grabs even the slimmest of chances to get on the ipad!) so even he isn't spashing anything around - YET.

I totally agree not on the floor! But is it worth trying for the joy the lovely texture will give me? And if it all goes horribly wrong (and horribly yellow) then it's not the end of the world to pull it off and replace with Porcelanosa or the very lush FMG ones next time there'a a sale on?

(If that sounds too spoiled princess for words, I should specify that I'm talking about 120cm high by 135cm wide area so genuinely not a huge investment to take down and replace!)

Thanks again to you all, especially the Porcelanosa and FMG tip people XX