Soap scum always won. No matter how diligently I scrubbed, my first bath renovation’s showstopping backsplash of subway tiles always looked dirty. Water spots.
Hair product splatters. That film we never seem to rinse away overnight. Whatever it was, it glared at me in bright magenta letters every time I looked in the shower.
Donkey this – there has to be a better way!, I thought to myself one dreary Sunday morning, vigorously brushing grout lines with a toothbrush. Boy was I wrong.
And yet, two years later, I’ve learned so much about choosing tiles for your bathroom based on wear and tear alone.
Tile trends? Sure, I know about those too. But when your teenage son dumps wet towels on the bathroom floor AND your husband sprays toothpaste everywhere – even the places you didn’t know could get wet – it’s what your bathroom still looks like after date nights in that really matters.
Take my bathroom floor, for example. It’s a speckled grey ceramic with natural-looking variation that resembles stone. Specifically, Daltile’s River Rock collection in “Storm.” The minute I saw swatches at my local home store I knew I was in love.
Not only does it look beautiful…I mean, tile. But yah. It looks beautiful.
Two years later, it STILL looks beautiful. Hours into online research I realised: slight variation in colour and pattern is kind of genius. Water droplets vanish.
Soap doesn’t cling. Even muddy paw prints from my dog trailing throughout the house – whoops – are barely noticeable until bath day. It’s not just the colour, although that definitely helps if you know what you’re looking for.
Darker or varying shades allow whatever mess you haven’t swept up enough to camouflage into floordesign. (Sorry. Got a little into “Floorspirational” there.) What really threw dirt all over my previous judgment was texture, or lack thereof. See, my husband and I opted for sleek, perfectly smooth tiles when we renovated our upstairs bathroom a few years ago.
Porcelain marble-look tiles – a fraction of the cost of the real thing! We thought we were so fancy. Until every speck of dust, errant hair, and water spot became glaringly obvious against that perfectly smooth surface.
Like I said: dummy dad taught me better. Case in point: my guest bathroom. I installed long, rectangular marble-looking tiles all over the floor.
Attractive? You betcha. Easy to clean?
Hahahaha, nope. Skip forward three weeks…every little water droplet that dried after someone showered caked in a visible dot. Ick.
So I scrubbed. A lot. To the point where my mother-in-law remarked, kindly, that my floor “showed everything.” Yep.
YOU DESCRIBE MY LIFE RIGHT NOW. Lesson. Learned.
Since that lovely encounter I’ve taken to hovering over tiles that offer some sort of pattern or variation. Think slate. Think travertine.
Concrete gives this beautiful effect too. The slightly uneven texture of these materials – and by that I mean subtle shifts in colour, tone, and the way light hits each tile differently – allows bathrooms with busy flooring to hide all of life’s disasters. Let’s talk about finish too.
Prepandemic, I probably would have avoided a tile with ANY sheen. But lately I’m gravitating towards tiles with a low-luster finish that’s sort of in between matte and shiny. Enough sheen that your floor still feels clean and bright.
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But not so much that every fingerprint and water droplet glares back at you like a mirror. The tiles I used in my master bathroom boast what the home store tech described as a “satin” finish. Which is just a nerd way of saying not matte, but not super shiny either.
The finish is amazing. Water droplets bead right up for easy wiping, yet don’t leave those dreaded streaks behind. TLDR: large format isn’t always better when it comes to hiding dirt.
Those luxe-looking 12×24 tiles or extra-large 18×18 squares may be bigger splashes of style, but they also have less grout lines to help camouflage dirt. My kitchen counters swear by large-format tile too, but let me tell you…every grain of pepper, every breadcrumb from avocado toast is on display for all to see. My darker-coloured bathroom floor with more grout hides behind the scenes where it belongs.
Wait…what about grout? You didn’t THINK I’d forget grout, did you? Yeah.
Me neither. I used to stick with white or light grey grout because it always LOOKED cleaner. Newsflash: it just shows dirt quicker.
Avoid anything in that colour family if you want your bathroom floor to forgive you when company comes over. Dark grey – or even black! – grout was a gamble, but I love how it hides stains and water marks. It gives your bathroom floor an intentional look rather than “someone forgot to mop oh wait, that’s me.” Wait…I said DON’T Google “tile patterns bathroom,” didn’t I?
Yep, I did. Sure enough, there were tiny penny tiles all over Google Image results. They EMBARRASSED my actually penny tiles I installed two years ago in a powder room makeover.
Chic? Cheque. Adorable?
You bet. Easy to keep clean? No freaking way.
Truth: cleaning in-between those miniature grout lines takes me twice as long as my regular shower floor. And do they show dust? You have no idea.
And sorry cats, but stepping foot on these tiles literally feels like you’re getting pedicured. Every.single.time. The pattern I’d choose all over again is actually…nothing at all.
A classic herringbone pattern with rectangular tiles worked beautifully for me. They range in shades of brown and grey, which helps camouflage dust-like dirt. But it’s really the pattern that does all of the heavy lifting.
Broken up in zigzags, it’s harder for dust bunnies to sneak up on you. Contractor Tommy hated my style. Said they were too busy.
I should have listened to him–my choices definitely don’t match the crisp, white subway tiles we installed in the rest of our house. Bonus though? They still look new to me two years later, despite mopping…once a week?
Yeah. Sometimes!Don’t judge. Bold statement, I know.
But hear me out.
Warm grey played a huge role in our old bathroom’s lack of ability to camouflage dirt. Dark-coloured tiles soak up tons of heat (yay summer shower? ), but also become ice-cold in the winter.
Return home to my current tile and it’s ALWAYS a comfortable temperature. Did you know larger tiles can actually make a small space feel larger? Case in point: my little hall bathroom.
It looks at least twice as wide as it is because the tiles trick your eye into thinking it’s one continuous floor rather than individual pieces. While talking to a contractor friend about this he swore by textured tiles to help hide dirt. Insert eye roll emoji.
Dry fingertip trails left behind on the floor convinced me textured tiles would be a nightmare to clean. Not the case! Texture actually grabs onto cleaning solution better than flat finishes where liquid pools and slides around.
