What wall tiles go with penny floor tiles?

[jellyxat]

We're having the bathroom redone next month. It's quite a small bathroom. I've decided on hexagonal penny tiles - white with dark grout - on the floor (see photo of the sort of thing). What should I get on the walls?

Options are:
(1) white metro tiles - probably white grout
(2) white Zellige tiles
(3) anything else?

I have Zellige tiles in the kitchen and they're very beautiful, though the colour is more off white/grey, and they're deliberately uneven, so would be tricky to clean.

What does MN think?

@jellyxat

I'm not sure I'm keen on penny tiles on walls... wouldn't the horizontal line where they end look funny?

What about this? Large square tiles on the walls.

This looks fab!

Love these later pics. Very different vibes from the penny tiles to the black and white but I like both.

I'll be in this dilemma soon and wondering if dark baths and sinks will look dated quite quickly though 🤔.

We had exactly that combo in our old bathroom and it looked lovely. Plus the marble effect hid everything and because it was classic you could add any colour in and it worked. Like multicoloured morrocon knobs etc. But you originally wanted penny tiles. So go with what you want. Maybe get some samples and hold up in the room?

What about the plain large wall panels you can get?

I'm no help. It took me about six months to choose new bathroom flooring. I have a collection of "coasters" which are actually flooring samples

I think the black and white tiles look much better. I am not keen on penny tiles. I think they will date quickly.

Thanks everyone. I'm going to order the marble tiles and see what they're like in real life. Some porcelain marble effect tiles (and encaustic effect tiles) look very crummy in real life, so I'm prepared to be disappointed.

I think PP has it right possibly that penny tiles will look dated in a few years. That's my fear too!

I have black and white floor tiles and metro (small, flat and matt-ish, not bevelled) on the walls around the bath. I think it looks classic and we painted the walls and ceiling in Treron F&B. However I would think really carefully about the colour of grout on the floor...we have light grey for the walls (which is great and doesnt show anything up) and slightly darker for the floor and honestly I wish we had gone for black grout on the floor as it looks a bit grubby now.

We redid our small (165x230) bathroom 3 years ago. We went for medium grey hexagon floor tiles, and large (60x30) plain white wall tiles with white grout (to minimise the visual disturbance of grout lines making the bathroom look smaller). For this reason I wouldn’t put small tiles on the wall in a small bathroom - you either end up with loads of white grout to clean, or loads of non-white grout breaking up the visual.

Here’s a hopefully non outing pic

Oh lovely @BlairWaldorfLovesShopping are the floor tiles marble or marble effect?

@bravotango could I possibly see a photo at all?

It’s just these from Topps in the medium grey:
www.toppstiles.co.uk/bistro/bistro-grey-hexagon-tile

Hopefully this works...

@bravotango beautiful - especially love the little ledge in the bath area.

Can I ask - can you turn on your shower using the taps in the middle of the bath? I'm considering a 'double ended' bath, so I don't have to turn on the shower and then shimmy away quickly before I'm drenched. I always assumed the taps for everything would be in the middle, but see you have some taps on the right too?

Ah - so the taps in the middle are for the bath and the handheld shower, and then the shower has its own tap underneath. I also wanted side taps but it wouldn't have worked with the wine shelf so decided against. One thing I noticed with the double ended bath is that it drains slower than my previous bath - not sure if it's because the plug is in the middle, or because it's a bigger bath, or maybe my plumber was a bit rubbish!

Did you use a bathroom designer? I'm sure there are little tricks and tips that would be handy, like your shelf, that I'm not thinking of.

No! We saved for two years which gave plenty of time to work out exactly what we wanted . Main things we wanted were a shelf all the way along the wall/bath (the bath is boxed in at each end so is fitted wall to wall), and a big vanity unit with space either side of the sink. We bought an IKEA sideboard and lacquered the top, and our plumber cut a hole in the top to fit the sink. Also Instagram was our main source of inspiration!

Oh I'm aaaaall over Instagram! I find it a lot easier to use than Pinterest for inspiration.

The bathroom measures 2m wide and the bath will be 1.8m. I'm currently trying to work out what to do with the spare 20cm 🤔 all ideas welcome!

Yes me too! Can't really work Pinterest. With the extra 20cm I would box it out around the bath so it's like a shelf - will attach a pic of ours. You could also build a sort of cupboard with shelves above? Have seen pics like that.

See

Aha I see! That's exactly what we need.

Having thought further about the likes of your shelf, or an alcove/recessed bit which I've seen elsewhere, I don't think it will work for us. If the bathroom is modestly sized, won't this sort of thing eat into the space?

Yes it will, because you need a stud wall building in. Ours is about 10cm deep I think so we've lost that from the width of the room, but it's a large room anyway as we knocked through from a separate toilet into one bathroom. Although if you've got the 20cm at the end, couldn't you have that built all the way up to the ceiling and have shelves in it (or something)?

Number 17 (!!) on this link has what I mean!

www.idealhome.co.uk/bathroom/bathroom-ideas/bathroom-storage-ideas-192447

That's a nice idea! I wonder how much that would add to labour though 🤑

I love the appearance of the ubiquitous Aesop hand wash

Surely the added labour cost is worth the opportunity for Aesop??!

These
Best thing we've done!

Oh I'm not brave enough for that!