Choosing tiles has been one of the hardest decisions of our renovation. Once you choose tiles and have them installed, there is no going back. This makes it a very scary decision. Plus, it can be hard to picture what a particular tile will look like once it fills a wall. But we persevered and we are thrilled with the results!
Feature Tile
The feature of our ensuite is the double shower. We therefore needed to capitalise on this and make it really special. We decided that a feature tile would work really well on the back wall of the shower. It is a short wall, standing at only 1.6m, as it is at the short end of a sloped ceiling. Feature tiles can sometimes be over-bearing in a small room like a bathroom, so we thought this short wall would work well.
Matt’s first choice was this morocaan-style tile, called ‘Artisan Oslo’ in Denim:
I really liked it too, though I was a LITTLE concerned it might date. However, in the end, our builder told us the size and pattern of this tile wouldn’t work on that wall. Since we wanted a recessed shelf in the shower, we required a tile that was 300mm high, as this is the ultimate height for storing shampoo bottles etc. This tile was only 200mm. We could have built a 400mm shelf which would require two rows of tiles, but we felt the shelf would look too big on such a short wall. The width of the wall also meant the pattern would be cut off unevenly, which we were not thrilled about.
So we changed tack and went on a hunt for a 300mm tile. We stumbled on this one from Amber Tiles:
It is a Carrera Marble tile. We both liked that the marble was old-worldy, but the small square-shapes were modern. Since the tile was broken up into smaller parts, it meant it was easy to cut and configure to fit the recessed shelf. Being marble, it was expensive – coming in at roughly $400 per square metre – YIKES! But since we only needed 2 square metres, we thought it was worth the splurge. And this was the result:
We are so happy with it! And thrilled with the recessed shelf also!
Wall Tile
Now that we had out feature tile, we moved onto wall tiles. Since the feature tiles are small and quite busy, we decided to contrast with a large tile, measuring 300 x 600mm.
Throughout this renovation, I’ve come to appreciate the value of texture. So often when designing rooms, we just think of colour and patterns. But texture adds such warmth and class to a room. For this reason, we chose a high-gloss wall tile, to contrast with the rough, matte finish of the marble tile.
These tiles are a dime a dozen and very cheap compared to a feature tile. I got these beauties for only $18.99 a square metre from Amber Tiles.
Here is a photo of them on the wall adjacent to the feature tiles. I think they work beautifully next to each other.
This next photo is taken from the angle of the shower, looking back at where the vanity will eventually go.
Floor Tile
The floor tile was quite an easy decision in the end. All along, we knew we wanted a dark surface in the bathroom, so it would not show every single speck of dust and strand of hair. It was then a matter on deciding on the size and finish.
We chose a dark grey tile in order to pull out the grey colour in the marble feature tile. We also wanted a square shape so it wasn’t all matchy-matchy with the large rectangular tiles on the walls.
Bathroom floors need to slope down towards the drain, so our tiler told us we couldn’t go any bigger than this 300 x 300mm tile, in order to get that slope.
I liked the stripe in this tile, and it also had a rough finish which contrasted well to the high-gloss wall tiles. Look what else we managed to squeeze into our ensuite…
A laundry chute! This hole sits directly above the laundry, so it will feed the clothes straight into one of the laundry cupboards. Remember in this post I said we had to sacrifice the chute in order to have a double vanity?
Well I managed to find a Timberline vanity from Harvey Norman that confined the pipes to the two centre cupboards, meaning the draws either side where free from pipes. We had to order this floor-standing vanity, rather than a wall-hung, so the laundry chute is hidden from view. The chute will only take up the bottom left-hand drawer.
Sooo guess which side of the vanity I’ll be using? The one WITHOUT the chute thank you – us ladies need that extra drawer.
We will only use the base part of this vanity, as we are planning to have a timber benchtop with an above counter sink.
So that’s where our ensuite is at, and we are STOKED with it so far! Can’t wait until the vanity is fitted, along with the above counter sinks.
– Penny xo
P.S I cannot recommend Amber Tiles enough! I bought all my tiles there. Not only did they give me the best prices (believe me, I checked) they were so helpful and went beyond to get my tiles to me as quickly as possible – often on the day! I have not been paid to say any of this, I just had a wonderful experience and wanted to share it.
