Fully tiled bathrooms - pros and cons

[MariaDingbat]

Our new house has two fully tiled bathroom (main and ensuite) and I think the tiles are dreadful. The family bathroom is poo brown with a brown flock shiny pattern and beige floor and the ensuite is white with small black circles and black with big black shiny circles. My instinct is to rip out all the tiles and only have a small amount of replacement tiles where needed for waterproofing. However, my head says that's too expensive. Should we retile the whole walls? Poster them and only retile small areas? Paint the existing tiles? They rooms were done at most 10 years ago.

*Plaster the walls not poster them.

I think fully tiled bathrooms are best for preventing damp patches.
They are also easy to clean.
Tile paint would be the cheapest option.
Best option: retile the whole room.

We moved 10 years ago to a ,60s property, complete with pink bathroom,but the bath,basin and loo were slightly different colours. It's open plan,I spent 4 Months at screaming point when DH refitted the kitchen,which is open plan to the lounge.Tiny hall with the bathroom first 2 beds. Told him I'd rather keep the pink than live in a building site. He stripped it, just had the loo,washed in the bathroom sink, buckets of water down to flush the loo. Another 4 months. You have another bathroom,so you won't have this. It's fully tiled,big white glossy tiles,with a strip of expensive mosaics above the bath. Just a wipe down, coloured cupboards and accessories,so it doesn't look clinical

We went for fully tiled, so much easier to clean and looks nicer than the half tiled we had before. I wouldn’t try and tile over plaster skim, as it’s not strong enough for any kind of heavy tile, you’d need to use plasterboard (water resistant + tanking).

Thanks for the info all. I hadn't thought about damp or wall strength. I've never had to deal with fully tiled walls before, how do put up pictures or cupboards or shelves? Just drill though the tiles?

I have all glass in the shower and splash back areas, but it was bloody expensive.

The bonus is sooooo easy to clean, no grout to discolour and I can change the colour of the walls, you can fit it over rough walls for a great finish.

Unfortunately like I said, it’s expensive and best for a brand new bathroom where you can budget for it rather than a spruce up arrangement.

Fully tiled . Much nicer unless it’s a period property you want to keep the right features.

Painting tiles never looks great.

We had our fully tiled bathrooms taken out (probably 20 years old though). And replaced with half tiled. It’s a personal thing, I’ve never liked fully tiled, it feels hotel-y and cold to me. So we’ve tiled round bath, shower, and sinks and back of loo but left one wall untitled in en suite and family bathroom.

The walls needed new waterproof plaster boarding, skimmed where we weren’t tiling, and tanked round shower. But I love my new tiles that aren’t the original pinky beige cream.

Alternatively, post a picture on here and someone will give decorating ideas for toning it down.

Our work above was done as part of bigger needed refurb. Not just because hated the tiles.

Fully tiled is much cleaner. We drilled through to add heavy mirror above sink ( need ceramic tile drill piece).

You could use command strips for basics pictures if you added. But the paper inside will get damp over time in bathrooms so wouldn’t really add pictures to bathrooms.

Oh and our toilet brush is just wall mounted with 3m stick on option, no screws. It’s been up 3 years so far without falling off so pretty good

@SpeakingFranglais

I have all glass in the shower and splash back areas, but it was bloody expensive.

The bonus is sooooo easy to clean, no grout to discolour and I can change the colour of the walls, you can fit it over rough walls for a great finish.

Unfortunately like I said, it’s expensive and best for a brand new bathroom where you can budget for it rather than a spruce up arrangement.

Would you be able to post a picture? I’m doing bathroom soon and this sounds great

Fully tiled. Go for bigger ones (you save £££ on the tiler) i didnt go for huuuuge ones mine are 30 x50 maybe? But steered clear of metro tiles

Cupboards and shelves are just drilled in.

I found going to the show room and viewing sample bathrooms helpful. Our bathroom is a colour /design I'd never have picked as packs of tiles, without seeing it in the flesh i couldn't have visulised it.

Warning: it sounds ugly but honestly is modern/pleasant and gets a lot of compliments

there are 5 tile types! The flooring, lower wall, a border tile, upper wall/top tiles and then a vertical contrast "stripe" in a textured stone in the walk in shower.

It soumds bananas but is visually quite easy on the eye.
I really thought borders were very cheesy and old fashioned but i found adding interest via the tiles removed the need for wall art and its much easier to keep clean.

I prefer the look of part tiled to fully tiled personally. But I hate cleaning tikes/grout and would love glass or plastic wall coverings in the shower like @SpeakingFranglais

Aquila els is another option - so many colours and designs and often thEy go over existing tiles. Nice clean lines with no grouting to go manky.

I absolutely hate fully tiled bathrooms, looks so dated

Our tiles are big, 60x60

I had fully tiles bathrooms in my old house, in future I will have shower board, much easier to clean, quicker to install, no grout, completely water proof.

Fully tiled walls dated! You got fancy wallpaper! You can tile over tiles,it they are sound. We couldn't find a bath the exact size of the bathroom,so DH built a false Wall out of some special water proof sheeting
Got him to leave an oval shape to hold the shower products.We would have loved a big open ended walk in shower but the grandkids stay,they needed a bath. We've been trying to find a wall towel rail 450 wide to go by the shower,they are all 600. So we have been trawling the bathroom show rooms. Saw a wall mounted toilet brush,£139 in rather nasty weird pink shade looking like plastic

We have just had shower room completely gutted right down to crumbling bricks and then replastered. No tiles at all, mermaid board in shower area. I think that paints are so good now that fully tiled is not necessary.
The bathroom should be finished this week. We have a free standing roll top bath so no tiles at all in there either.
Photo is off shower room gutted.

following for interest!

There are companies that spray paint wall tiles, is it worth looking into that? It will get a better finish that the paint that goes on with a brush.

www.wesprayupvc.co.uk/can-kitchen-tiles-be-spray-painted/

I assume as they spray paint exterior window frames they can do bathroom tiles too.

We have fully tiled (having initially gone to the shop to choose dado height tongue and groove!). It looks amazing (we think) and very easy to keep clean. Did it six years ago, it still looks fresh and we still love it. Thankfully!

If you are going to paint them use a foam roller (not brush) and obviously tile paint.

@Cissyandflora

Hope this uploads. The other two walls in the room are painted and you can get glass in dozens of colours.