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.

Our new bathroom is fully tiled with metro tiles. I love it, so easy to clean and wipe down the walls. As two of the walls are stud walls we have storage/mirror/towel rails attached with bathroom command strips.

Our upstairs bathroom is fully tiled but extremely dated (large brown beige style tiles). The bathroom is also huge so it feels so cold in there

Thanks for the help everyone, I think my personal preference is for half tiled but I've realised I can't justify ripping out the existing tiles just because i don't like them as they're in great condition, as are the bathroom suites. So i may have to suck it up and live with them for a few years. Here's a photo of the family bathroom, there are no windows and you can't really see the glazed brown flock pattern on the tiles, but it's there. Who knows, it may have been someone's dream bathroom once 🤣

I don't like fully tiled bathrooms.

I have quite large tiles (30x60. 4 high ) so 120 plus grouting) on 3 walls and 5 tiles above the bath line (as there's a shower over it) and on the front of the bath. Same tiles floor & walls. It took me ages to find these, but I LOVE them. They're (the much MN hated) mid/light grey with a lighter grey grout. The rdmsinder of the walls & ceiling are white.

7 years on they still look great & if I wanted to I could change things up just be painting the non tiled bits of wall.

I've recently had a lot of people in & out (due to an injury) and everyone still comments how lovely the bathroom is, but I wouldn't care if they didn't! I love it.

I want to take it with me when I move!! Sadly the tile is no longer available so I can't even use them again in a new bathroom

Bathroom paint is easy to wipe, but frankly, the top couple of feet of my bathroom
Walls don't exactly get dirty 🤣

Love love love my bathroom

@MariaDingbat

Thanks for the help everyone, I think my personal preference is for half tiled but I've realised I can't justify ripping out the existing tiles just because i don't like them as they're in great condition, as are the bathroom suites. So i may have to suck it up and live with them for a few years. Here's a photo of the family bathroom, there are no windows and you can't really see the glazed brown flock pattern on the tiles, but it's there. Who knows, it may have been someone's dream bathroom once 🤣

I could justify redoing that bathroom. That would depress me. If you can afford to do it, why wait?

I had a skylight window put in my bathroom as it was like yours, no windows and it made the world of difference

@MariaDingbat It's much nicer than I expected from your description! It's annoying how quickly kitchen and bathroom trends change - purely a marketing ploy to make us change things that are still perfectly good.

I’d not fully tile. Nothing is as “timeless” that you’ll still like the colour in 15 years time. You’re better off changing colour via repainting and having a neutral/boring tile.

I don’t think there are any cons to a fully tiled bathroom. It prevents walls from becoming damp during condensation, is easy to clean and doesn’t need redecorating. If you don’t like the tiles you have, that’s a different issue. I have have had all my bathrooms fully tiled from the time I could afford to do so.

We have fully tiled. But in the main bathroom we also have a huge mirror from wall to wall up to the ceiling above the bath, which brightens the room considerably. And the tiles are very high quality porcelain ones. It looks lovely and would do it again.

Bathrooms seem to date so quickly compared to kitchens, what looks fresh and modern initially looks dated and tired really quickly.

I have a large fully tiled bathroom and a smaller one. The large one has 400x600 tiles. Less grout! They are Porcelanosa and are wonderful. The room has a lot of natural light so I did go for darker tiles. Like molten metal. They are wonderful. The smaller bathroom is stone tiled. It looks natural and fresh. The tiles are 400x400.

We have wall cupboards in both bathrooms. 3 in the large bathroom and one over the sink in the smaller bathroom. No problems fixing them to the walls. Also a towel holder shelf in the small bathroom, loo roll holders in both and glass wall mounted shelves in both of the showers too. Also wall hung loos and basins. I would never ever have pictures in a bathroom. Why would you?

OP- your bathroom does need refurbishing. It is horrible. Don’t paint tiles! Just spending money on a crap finish! It’s a very dated bathroom and it would depress me! If you cannot afford much, remove the tiles to half way. Make good the walls snd paint them.

Actually tiles are 900 x 400. Pix attached

I don't think it is awful-I could live with that for sure. I like fully tiled but with smaller tiles. This style looks lovely www.remodelista.com/posts/bath-remodel-green-heath-ceramics-tile-new-zealand-katie-lockhart/

I think TizerorFizz's bathroom is very similar style to yours just with grey big tiles instead of brown and just as brown may have been more fashionable when your bathroom went in grey became fashionable and then that will also date too-the main thing is you can live with it and if you can it is a big saving not having to do a bathroom. Both those bathrooms are perfectly fine and I would not change either.

I think the difference is that my tiles have variation in the glaze and it’s a big well lit bathroom with lots of natural light. I’m lucky in that it’s one of 5 bathrooms and the others are more conventional in colour! We thought we could be a bit more flamboyant with this one. It’s already 11 years old so it might date in another 10 years. Who knows?

I quite like the wall tiles. (Hate the term poo brown: you could say it about trees!, or about @trumpisagit's lovely wood cabinets). Don't like the floor but you can put a rug down.

Could you get some quality 70s green or orange ceramics in there and some trailing plants for now, and give it a more deliberate retro vibe.

No window is a problem. If / when you redo I'd definitely try and get a window or skylight in there.

out of interest, how much does it cost to have a new bathroom installed?

We recently moved house, and the bathroom is AWFUL. It's completely tiled (including the bath panel), and it is a grey/blue marble complete with 1990s patterns in various tiles. Half the grout has come off, and there is mold all over the silicone. Plus, where the bath meets the tile, it comes away, so as soon as you sit in it, the bath lowers down. We tried using sealant but the bath needs lifting up by a few mm but because the panel has been tiled in, you can't get to it!

So I'm the same - trying to work out what the cheapest way of getting it done it, whether to go full tile/half tile or the glass splashback option

@thebellagio It cost us £23K to have an ensuite and family bathroom overhauled and a megaflo put in.

They had to completely rip out and plasterboard both rooms, tank one of them, put in new electrics for both rooms, part tile both, and put in pipe work for radiators. Neither are big rooms, just they hadn't been touched since the early 90s and hadn't been particularly well done then.

I prefer part tiling with pained walls so I can change the colour whenever I want, without changing the tiles.
My tiles are white/light grey.
And I don’t have any damp, the paint is bathroom paint.

Cheap and easiest to clean option would be to fit showerwalliver all the tiles. You can get plain colours or wven print photos on it. But it won’t last as long as tiles till.

Best option is to retile whole room.

Worst option is to retile small area then paint rest. Unless you have amazing ventilation and constantly dry the shpwer after use, the paint (even anti mould paint) will get mould on.

I really dislike fully tiled. But I hate cleaning grout so Definitely do not find it easier to clean!

We've just re-done our peachy nightmare 90's main bathroom and en-suite. Ripped out the fully tiled walls, and redone in half tile. So much brighter and cleaner. I will try to upload some photo's in a bit.

Cost was £25k for both, plus tiles and paint, but including new boiler, tank, pump, flooring, stand alone bath, walk in showers, electric pumped showers, designer cabinets, 2 new and one extra rad, electrics etc etc.

I think that was a pretty good price in things considered.

We never never had mould problems, even without extractor, so don't think it will be a problem now, plus we have installed new up to date extractors which don't let cold air in, unlike our old ones, which we blocked off.

We have fully tiles, it's so easy to clean. It's been only a year so everything is still sparkly. The grout is white but for those who struggle to keep it white 'Flash with bleach' spray is really good. I used to use it on the old bathroom.

I’ve never cleaned grout in my life. If you buy a close fitting large tile there isn’t any grout to clean in any quantity. The grout has never been cleaned in the bathroom I posted. But it’s well ventilated, large and has big tiles. Wide spaced small tiles are the worst. Large format is the best wag to go. Wall panels always look a big cheap. Depends on the value of the house though.,

I prefer panelled walls. Made with tongue and groove style MDF sheets and dado-rail. Here is a pic of my teenage kids bathroom, but we have 4 bathrooms and 3 of them have this same panelling. The only tiles are in the shower and on the floor (although I wish the shower ones were plain white here). We live in a period property / barn.

I have similar in one bathroom. But I was really meaning the shower panels. Tongue and groove isn’t quite the same. (Did you want your soil pipe quite so obvious?)