The 14 Best Uses of Bathroom Tile That Anyone Planning a Project Should Look at Before They Begin

Not so very long ago, properly desirable bathroom tile was firmly in the ‘nice if you’ve got a trust fund’ category. Now, even the bargain retailers have designs worth drooling over. New launches land on my desk every day, and I generally fall hard for a new tile collection at least once a week.

Finding a tile you love is the easy part; working out how to do it justice is where I seriously struggle. Even the most gorgeous bathroom tiles can look a bit naff if the installation is sub-par, or your tile plan has the imagination of a landlord tarting up a rental. Where you start and stop, which direction you lay it, and what you put alongside it all need thinking through, preferably before your tiler arrives. A simple stripe can transform a modern bathroom’s proportions, while getting the scale right can make two attention-seeking patterns sing rather than sink. These are the decisions that I find far more interesting than whether a tile comes in another three shades of green.

Our roundup of bathroom tile ideas shows how much mileage there is in thinking beyond that initial purchasing high. From mosaics and diagonal marble stripes to cleverly tiled bath panels, we’ve gathered inspired spaces and advice from the designers behind them to help you do something more interesting with whatever tile you've set your sights on.

1. Send Stripes Sideways

Give a striped tile floor a more adventurous angle by laying it diagonally. It’s a simple twist with a big decorating payoff. The pattern cuts across the room, breaking away from the straight lines of walls and cabinetry. And in pink and green marble, it’s hardly going to go unnoticed.

Having already embraced a graphic marble floor in their kitchen, the now-owners of this pink bathroom were ready to carry that confidence upstairs. Diagonal bands of Jordan Pink and Jade Green marble tile from Balineum bring movement to a space that's full of beautifully considered details, from the curved glass enclosure to the slender patterned tile borders.

Those borders, also from Balineum, were actually the starting point. “The client fell for the decorative tile, and the palette developed from there, including the darkest green metal glazing bars around the bath and shower,” recalls Jo leGleud, who designed the space with Steph Worrall at Maddux Creative before the pair founded Worrall leGleud Interiors. With walls painted in Shell 1 by Paint & Paper Library and ceiling in Edward Bulmer’s Jonquil, plenty is going on. “But the repeated colors keep it connected. The floor tile gets to be exuberant because everything around it speaks the same language.”

2. Soak Up the Color

Bathroom color drenching is one decorating obsession we’re in no hurry to get over, it’s just so cocooning and cozy. For its Orange House project in Sokcho, South Korea, architecture studio one-aftr takes the idea onto tile, wrapping a pale pink bath in glossy orange custom tiles by Palet. It’s a bathing nook we’d happily retreat to, preferably with the door locked.

“Inspired by the changing colors of the surrounding foliage, we wanted to create an immersive bathing experience through variations of orange,” recalls Joon Ma, co-founder of one-aftr. “In contrast to the restrained concrete and timber surfaces of the living spaces, the bathroom becomes a more saturated, sensorial environment. The subtle variations in the tiles from Palet create a textured field of color that transforms the bathing recess into a space of its own.”

Note how the lighting is as carefully considered as the tile. “We integrated concealed linear lighting along the upper perimeter of the bathing recess to wash the tiled surfaces with a soft, indirect glow,” explains Joon. “The light accentuates the glossy texture and subtle variations in the tiles, bringing depth and warmth to the orange surfaces while reinforcing the immersive quality of the space.”

3. Take Stripes to the Top

A small bathroom with a tall ceiling is a fine excuse to get a little carried away with vertical stripes. In Pearl Lowe’s Notting Hill bathroom, pink-and-white skinny metro tiles by Bert & Mays provide a candy-striped backdrop to BC Designs’ curvaceous Senator bath. The brass shower ring and billowing shower curtains add to the sense of theater.

“I think we can get a little too hung up on the idea that small bathrooms need to be kept simple. Sometimes a bit of pattern is exactly what a room needs, and this is a brilliant example of how you can be quite brave with your tile choices and actually make a space feel bigger,” says Keeley Sutcliffe, design manager at BC Designs.

“The vertical stripes naturally draw your eye upwards, but what I particularly love is how they wrap around the entire room. Rather than drawing attention to individual walls and where they meet, you get this lovely continuous effect that almost distracts you from the room’s actual proportions.

“The width of the stripes is really important here, too. Go too wide, and you risk making the room feel more enclosed, whereas these slimmer bands have an almost wallpaper-like quality,” adds Keeley. “They’re bold, but there’s a softness to them, particularly alongside the curves of the bath and the warm brass.”

4. Dip into DIY Pattern

Designing your own tile pattern gives you a bespoke look using tiles straight off the shelf. Choose a simple shape in a handful of colors, then build your own repeat, experimenting with bands, checks and intersecting stripes. You control the scale and color combinations, which is how Regan Baker Design arrived at this custom plaid using Fireclay’s square ceramic tiles for this colorful bathroom.

“This client loved color and pattern and was never afraid to go for it – they even pushed us to do more in some spaces, which we loved,” says founder Regan Baker . “Building a plaid out of simple square tiles in orange, blue and cream felt both classic and a little unexpected at the same time.”

The recessed storage niche is especially clever. “We planned its size and placement before anything else so the stripes run right through it and the shelf lands on one of the orange bands, which keeps the pattern flowing across the wall,” she adds. “My advice is to map the full layout before tiling, checking where the bands meet the showerhead and tub edge, and work from the center so full tiles land in the most visible spots.”

5. Create a Backsplash Tidemark

Dado-height tiling may sound a little dated, but think of it as a backsplash that keeps going, and the idea feels much more current. Extending the tile beyond the vanity gives the room a continuous band of color and texture, with the basin area setting the height.

“Rather than continuing the bathroom countertop material as a backsplash, we used the wall tile instead, treating it the way a traditional splashback would be handled and aligning the transition point with the bottom of the mirror frame,” explains Sherrell Neal, founder and principal designer of Sherrell Design Studio. “The result is a detail that feels deliberate rather than arbitrary, and gives the room a tailored quality.”

Above it, Backdrop’s Wabi-Sabi wallpaper in Moss picks up the geometry of the slim glazed brick tiles in a larger grid. It’s a clever pairing that blurs the boundary between the two finishes, and offers a lot more energy than a plain painted wall.

Terrazzo brings another current material into the mix, while the wood vanity and linen curtain add warmer, softer textures. “For anyone worried that generously tiled walls might feel too clinical, playing with tile scale and layering in natural materials is the answer. Contrast creates interest, and interest is what keeps a room from feeling cold,” she adds.

6. Double Up on Pattern

Patterned floor tiles can hold their own against patterned walls, provided the two have different roles (and play nicely together). Here, Vanrenen Hanbury pairs a densely patterned green Moroccan floor tile with broad striped wallpaper by Adam Bray, giving each surface a distinct look.

The solid green bath panel links to the floor while offering a welcome stretch of uninterrupted colour. Whether your second pattern comes from wallpaper or tile, this is an excellent example of why you should look beyond plain walls to accompany decorative tile underfoot.

"When exploring multiple patterns, compare samples in the space. Look at them from the doorway as well as close up. If both patterns demand equal attention, try changing the scale or style of one before abandoning the combination," recommends co-founder Sarah Vanrenen .

7. Tile Wrap the Bath

A bath panel is prime decorating space, and far too good to waste on plain white plastic. Give it the full tile treatment and even an inexpensive built-in tub can get a boutique upgrade. “I like to look at the walls and floors as a blank canvas and create a ‘frieze’ or ‘carpet’ to fill the space — bath panel included,” says interior designer Henri Fitzwilliam-Lay.

“How you lay a tile can completely change the way it reads and creates its own texture,” Henri adds. Bands of pale blue and navy Balineum tiles wrap from the walls onto the bath front, their pointed borders giving the stripes a little bite. Precise alignment keeps the whole thing looking sharp. Plan the panel alongside the walls so the pattern turns each corner without breaking stride.

8. Carry Into Your En-suite

Matching your ensuite bathroom tiles to the bedroom wallpaper takes decorating coordination to a satisfying extreme. Why stop at picking out a color when you can carry the whole print through? In this project by Leveson Design, a sliver of space borrowed from the guest bedroom became a bathroom that feels very much part of the same decorating plan.

The wallpaper and tiles are both Cindy Leveson’s Cornflower Stripe in Pink & Green, with the floral repeat scaled down for the ceramic version. “They are made to order in England and, because the colours match — although the tile is a smaller scale — they work beautifully together and keeping the paint colour the same in both rooms made perfect sense,” explains Cindy.

Farrow & Ball’s Whirlybird green connects the spaces, while the patterned tiles make the shower feel like a miniature extension of the bedroom. “It is a nice surprise to turn right into the bathroom and find a fully tiled shower which matches the bedroom wallpaper.”

9. Go With the Ombre Flow

Ombre walls bring the loose, inky appeal of a swishy watercolor to bathroom walls, but with a much higher tolerance for splashes and toothpaste splatters. Here, Jacobs + Interiors has used Artistic Tile’s Ombre Extender Black Marble Mosaic to take the vanity wall from charcoal overhead to near-white below, letting the color drift between the two.

“This is a home on a beautiful lakefront in Iowa, and the tile’s soft organic flow had a water reference that we loved, creating a feeling of relaxation and suggestion of the water lapping at the shore,” says Yvonne Jacobs, founder and principal designer of Jacobs + Interiors.

That apparently effortless fade has had a fair bit of help behind the scenes. The tile supplier worked from the designers’ drawings to coordinate the pattern with the mirrors, lighting and vanity. Plotting the full wall before ordering is essential here, says Yvonne; you want the most interesting bit of your mosaic on show, rather than hidden behind a mirror. “The tile came in sheets, and we chose a grout color on the lighter side as we wanted it to feel light even in the dark areas,” she adds.

10. Add a Baseboard Border

A tiled baseboard is a small detail with plenty of scope to be as creative or restrained as you choose. Here, plain wall tiles get a little zhuzh from a row of black triangles — enough to interrupt the grid without taking over.

“Wrapping the geometric tile border around the base of the walls as a tiled ‘skirting’ is a brilliant way to visually anchor the room,” says Angela Simpson, co-founder of Simpson & Voyle. “It helps draw the eye to the more dynamic floor tile, without committing to pattern from floor to ceiling.”

A plain tile border in a color borrowed from the floor or elsewhere in the room can be enough to pull the scheme together. For something more playful, try a scalloped edge, alternating colors or a checkerboard strip. As Angela proves, a little pattern goes a long way at ankle height.

11. Supersize Your Mosaics

Mixing veined stone slabs with an equally showboaty mosaic tile floor needn’t end in chaos. Vanessa Deleon embraces the combo in her bathroom for the 2026 Kips Bay Decorator Show House New York, matching Viola Reale marble with Artistic Tile’s Custom Varo by Ali Budd Waterjet Mosaic.

Conceived as a wellness retreat designed for total immersion, it comes complete with a shower, cold plunge, and vanity arranged as a ritual sequence. “The slabs came first for me, and then I needed something to ground it,” recalls Vanessa. “I selected the custom Varo because it felt like a rock formation, and it pulled all the colors together.”

The oversized mosaic pieces help, too, with their broad curves holding their own alongside the marble’s sprawling veins, without adding a blizzard of tiny detail. “For an immersion room, I really wanted it to feel tranquil - a little bit of zen, but with a twist,” she adds.

12. Know When to Go Plain

Knowing when to stop is a useful decorating skill and one of the toughest to pull off, especially when your tile shortlist keeps getting longer. In this bathroom by Appreciation Project, Otto Tiles' Marrakesh Stripes and multicolored mosaics both made the cut, but generous stretches of plain ecru give each pattern space to register. Cover every surface in competing designs, and you’d lose those lovely individual details.

“I always like to strike a balance of playfulness and modernity,” says Natasha Lyon, co-founder and creative director of Appreciation Project. “I was originally inspired by Victorian pathways and their beautiful borders. I wanted to recreate this in a modern way.”

The patterned shower seat adds another reason to look beyond the basin area, while pale wall tiles keep the view from becoming too busy. Their glossy, uneven surfaces also prove that plain needn’t mean flat or characterless.

13. Bring Back All the Trimmings

One of our favorite traditional bathroom trend revivals sees tile’s supporting cast step back into the spotlight. We’re talking decorative borders, dado rails and corner pieces, all getting fresh attention from designers. “Clients are increasingly using these smart detail pieces – and that’s really exciting: that’s a return to traditional tile installations,” says Sarah Watson, founder of Balineum.

This vibrant bathroom by Henri Fitzwilliam-Lay is an excellent case for getting a piece of the action. Glossy green herringbone sits above a deep patterned lower section, with graphic borders keeping the different designs in line. It’s old-school detailing with absolutely no interest in looking old-hat.

“Most people when tiling just use plain field tile, but consider adding a tiled skirting, dado rail, ceiling cornice and mix colours and sizes,” says Sarah. “I’d use two or three colours across some different shapes to create panels – just like you would with plasterwork and paint in another room in the house.” The key is to choose those finishing pieces alongside your main tile, with border heights planned around sinks and windows.

15. Work Those Curves

Bathrooms often come with a shed load of straight lines and hard surfaces, so a curvy bathroom floor tile can be a brilliant antidote. Here, Zoë Feldman lets Fornace Brioni and Cristina Celestino’s Bibiena Cotta Bianca tiles for Clé Tile snake across the floor in oversized interlocking shapes, loosening up the strict grid of the wall tiles, shower screen and window.

"The interlocking tiles introduce warmth and visual structure, which helps anchor the space," says Zoë. "We kept the surrounding elements simple, using a vintage stool and a custom vanity to support the floor without competing with it. The bathroom is small, so we also love how this floor adds character without relying on lots of additional finishes.”

The scale of the tile choice here is worth an extra mention. Those broad, generous curves read as one strong gesture rather than lots of fussy little pattern, which keeps the space feeling graphic not fussy.

Before you commit, check out the mistakes making your bathroom tiles look cheap. Falling in love with the samples is easy; spending all that money and still feeling underwhelmed is a lot harder to handle.

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