Building House #7 – All Our Tile Selections

Today I’m giving you a little bathroom tour of our new house! Keep in mind that none of our bathrooms are “finished”. So consider these bathrooms like cupcakes without the frosting. 😉 Decorative, finishing details to come, and that’s truly my favorite part! But for now, here’s a look at each of our bathrooms with a focus on the tile I chose for each space.

Our new home has 4 and 1/2 bathrooms. Which may sound like a lot to some of you, but I wanted each of my children to have their own bathroom. And because we host out of town guests quite a bit, I also wanted our guest room to have it’s own bathroom as well. We plan on being in this home for a really long time. So looking far into the future, I envision my kids coming back home with their own families someday and feeling comfortable here in their own little suites.

Real Talk

Before we get into talking tile, let’s have a little real talk about budgets. In a custom build, you as the homeowner, along with the builder you’re working with set each line item of the budget. At least that’s how it worked in our case. What I didn’t realize when we set the budgets was that our tile allowance was meant to cover not just materials but also labor. SO my initial tile quote was almost double what my allowance was……….which of course sent me right back to the design drawing board. I ended up making a few simple, cost-saving changes and also left out a couple backsplashes (in my pantry and in the master bathroom) which brought the cost down dramatically.

I was initially bummed by this, but now in hindsight I’m actually glad it worked out this way. I have two spaces where I’m still pondering a backsplash, and I’m still not totally sure what I want for either of those spaces. So it’s a good thing that I wasn’t able to select something that I might have later regretted.

My Tile Selection Game Plan

Making design decisions for a new home is exciting but dizzying. It can get overwhelming pretty quickly. And I’m an enneagram type 9, so decision making isn’t really my strong suit. Ha!

Knowing this about myself, I came up with a game plan before I even started looking at tile. I’ve always been a black and white loving girl. I mean, yes, I love me some color in a space, but I’ve always been drawn to neutral bases and high contrast. So before shopping for tile I decided on a color scheme for all of our bathrooms ~ black, white and grey. Creating a concise color palette helped me to narrow down my tile options, at least a little bit. I also chose all of the bathroom countertops (solid white Corian) and all of our bathroom cabinetry before selecting tile. So I had a good jumping off point before making selections.

Master Bathroom

I was originally planning to tile the wall behind the vanities from the countertop to the crown molding, but now I’m thinking I might wallpaper instead. Still not quite sure.

For the floor I opted to go with a 24″ x 12″ marble look porcelain tile with a matte finish. The grout is white, so you almost don’t see the pattern of the tile itself which is what I was going for here. I initially chose actual marble, which was, you guessed it, way more expensive. But when I had to crunch the numbers and realized that I’d be throwing a fairly large area rug down to warm the space up, switching to a marble-look porcelain for less than half the price was a no brainer!

This was a good compromise, and I’m really happy with this look. At the end of the day, you have to prioritize what’s more important to you. And for me, I’d rather have the claw foot tub I’ve literally dreamt about since my dollhouse days as a child than marble floors. And all my husband really cared about was having a nice large shower with a rain head. So this floor tile switch gave him what he wanted too! 🙂

I’ve loved the look of an all black shower for a really long time. So I opted for a large scale 24″ x 12″ solid black porcelain (which is more of a charcoal) in a matte finish for the walls and a matte hexagon mosaic for the shower floor. Black tile, black grout, and we’re both 100% in love with how it looks!

When I mentioned my love of black showers a lot of people warned that it would be high maintenance and that water spots would be a huge issue. But we’ve been here 5 months now, and I’ve found this to be the lowest maintenance shower I’ve ever had. Matte finish tile is very forgiving.

The tile we chose for the shower walls didn’t come in a bullnose. So instead of using a boarder tile along the edges, we used a schluter tile edge which was not only cost effective but gave us a really clean, simple look.

The master shower is also the only place where we installed a niche.

Guest Bathroom

The guest bathroom is a long narrow space where I thought a herringbone floor would look great. I had this 16″ x 4″ marble look porcelain tile grouted in a light grey, so the herringbone pattern would be more prominent.

To keep the flow from the bathroom floor to the shower floor, I chose a smaller scale herringbone mosaic in the same tile.

I chose simple, white subway tile for the shower walls (classic and kind to my budget), grouted in black to add a more graphic punch to the space. This guest bath shower is pretty small, so I ran the tile all the way to the ceiling to create the illusion of more space.

Porcelain shelves are inexpensive, simple and effective. Here also, instead of using bullnose subway tile, I opted for a budget-friendly white schluter tile edge.

The Boy’s Bathroom

More subway tile grouted in black to the ceiling, and I’m not sorry. Listen, I’m a big believer in that old – if it’s not broken, don’t fix it – mantra. 😉 The main difference in the boy’s bathroom as compared to the guest bath is that here I did a charcoal floor and black cabinetry.

(Sidetone – Not totally crazy about the over the mirror light fixture. It’s smaller than expected, and will most likely be swapped for something larger down the road.)

Back to tile, for the bathroom floor I went with a large scale 24″ x 12″ tile that looks so much like slate. And I went with the coordinating 2″ x 2″ mosaic for the shower floor.

I just love me some black and white! And the black cabinetry against the slate black floor makes so happy!

The Girl’s Bathroom

My girl has a smaller bathroom but a larger closet, so the kids spaces are equal but different. Her bathroom is decidedly more feminine than the others, but it still falls within my black, white and grey color palette.

I used the same floor tile in her bathroom as I did in the master bath. Because again, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. 😉 Plus I do like and appreciate a little repetition in a house to tie all the spaces together.

*Also, a lot of tile vendors offer bulk discounts, so using a lot of the same tile also offered some cost saving benefits.

She has a bathtub/shower combo where I again opted for subway tile to the ceiling, but in her bathroom I used grey grout to tie in with the floor and cabinetry.

I almost opted for a pink tile in here. But in the end continuity won out, and also I just couldn’t beat the price of subway tile. So instead I infused a little punch of pink with her sconces.

So that’s the end of this little bathroom tour! I’m really happy with all of our tile selections. I mean real marble would have looked so lovely, but someone has to send these kids to college, sooooooo….. 😉 In all seriousness though, I really am happy with our marble look porcelain!