Are 24"x12" wall tiles too big for a standard 5' bathtub surround?

September 14, 2013 9:02 PM

We fell in love with some large travertine tiles but I'm worried that they may not be appropriate to the size of our bathroom. The large-sized wall tile examples I see online are all in big rooms with soaker tubs or oversized walk-in showers. I can't tell if this is because large tiles aren't suitable to "real world" bathroom sizes or if these floor-to-ceiling applications just showcase the tiles better.

We're renovating a 6'x9' bathroom with a tub at the far end of the room (in a three-sided surround with a window in the middle). We're updating the look to boxy-modern with very muted colours and textures.

Just looking for completely subjective opinions/impressions. Right now, it doesn't seem crazy but decorating/visualization has never been a strength of mine.

posted by bonobothegreat to Home & Garden (12 answers total)

Response by poster: ...forgot to mention that we'd be doing a horizontal subway pattern.
posted by bonobothegreat at 9:03 PM on September 14, 2013

I'd personally go smaller (like 3" X 6" standard subway tile) but that's just my opinion and shouldn't have much bearing on what you think/want from your bathroom's look/feel.

My mom wanted me to put down some huge 18" by 18" tile in her tiny, tiny hallway. I laid some out for her and she agreed that it looked wrong. I ended up cutting it down to 4" by 18" and it looks pretty spanky. I don't have pictures to show you, though. My suggestion would be to pick up a few samples in different sizes to check it out in your actual room.
posted by fluffy battle kitten at 9:42 PM on September 14, 2013 [1 favorite]

They will look more like panels than tiles, which is okay if that's the look you want. You really need to just buy a couple and hold them up to the wall and such.
posted by Behemoth at 11:54 PM on September 14, 2013

I've seen this in very small hotel bathrooms and felt it worked quite well with fairly plain tiles when done with only a little grout so it looked almost seamless.
posted by AnnaRat at 12:50 AM on September 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

We have tiles that size in our bathroom, which is actually a little smaller than yours. Ours resemble imitation stone (i.e., the manufacturer wasn't trying very hard); and are placed vertically, not horizontally, and not stepped. I think they look nice and I don't have any feeling that they're too large for the room.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:11 AM on September 15, 2013

I think it could look just fine, and I think a horizontal running bond (the staggered pattern typically used for subway tile, and also common bricklaying) is a good choice. My only hesitation would be that a wall of large, polished travertine tile says to me, 'welcome to the presidential suite in my fancy hotel,' rather than 'welcome to my clean and modern NYC loft.'
posted by jon1270 at 2:46 AM on September 15, 2013

Someone asked that question on an Internet forum and got some answers with pics here.
posted by vitabellosi at 5:30 AM on September 15, 2013

From an aesthetics point of view - it's whatever you like. If you like it you can do it. I've seen a shower tiled with river rock - it was hell to clean though.

From a practical standpoint, they'll work - to a certain extent. You can use floor tiles on walls, but wall tiles almost always have spacing lugs on them so you can align them perfectly.

So to put floor tiles on the wall, you do pretty much the same thing as wall tiles except that you'll need to put in spacers if you want to keep them all nice and even, but if you adjust one tile, trust me, you will suffer a rain of tiny, plastic Ninja throwing stars.

I love putting down floor tile. On the floor. I'll pay someone else to suffer the walls from now on.
posted by plinth at 7:17 AM on September 15, 2013

Response by poster: Great answers all! Thanks for the link vitabellosi. Looking at the photos and thinking about the comments here, I'm getting the sense that large tiles look best in small spaces when you have a floor-to-ceiling design.

We have a bath/shower unit, which is starting to feel a bit archaic compared to the soaker tub/shower combos everywhere, so now I'm thinking that a somewhat smaller tile would be more in keeping with the 40s to 70s era, when the bath/shower was king. Also, the house is a hundred years old, without a lot of updates otherwise.

This will be my fist DIY tiling experience and I'm probably not appreciating the difficulty in dealing with super large tiles.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:28 AM on September 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

We had big square tiles in the tub surround in the 1940s house I grew up in, and they looked fine. It's not a look that's currently used, so if you want it to appeal to others, might be an issue. If you like it, I'd go for it.
posted by theora55 at 8:01 AM on September 15, 2013

The comments on Vitabellosi's link warn about something I didn't know about: bowing. Large tiles can bow in or out, making the middle of the tiles protrude or sink in. When placed in a running bond pattern the middle of a tile meets the edges of the adjacent tiles, so the place where the problem is worst is next to places where it's least, making a sort of lip. As the commentator says, this would be worse on a floor than on a wall, but it's something to be aware of.
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:38 PM on September 15, 2013

something I didn't know about: bowing.

That's ceramic tile -- warpage that happens when the tile is fired in a kiln. Not an issue with slices of stone. You can still end up with lippage on a stone tile surface, but in that case it's not the tiles' fault.
posted by jon1270 at 3:04 AM on September 16, 2013