Are you doing the tiling yourself, or having someone else do it? We were told by several tiling stores that although you would require fewer tiles, it is much more difficult to work with the larger tiles if you are doing it yourself. For that reason alone we went with the 13x13 tiles, and our area is approx 400 sq ft. (and so far it looks fantastic)

Here is a link that might be useful: floor tile

What about doing a pattern? The pattern I put in my bathroom was very easy. And one of the nicest things is that because of the way the grout lines do not meet up, the pattern is very forgiving. The big tiles are 13" and the little ones are 5" (I think). The only bad thing about this pattern is along the edges, you can expect to do a lot of cutting. Not too bad though, especially if you have a wet saw.

Larger tiles make a small room look bigger. We did 20" x 20"

Here's how they looked b/f walls & cabinet and w/o grout. Our Kitchen, in this picture is still 11'1" wide (it's now 10'6" wide b/c we had to build a wall 7" in to work around plumbing for our vent hood & cabinets w/o a huge soffit)

Hopefully, Bill_V (or other expert) will chime in about perceptions w/small vs large tile & any special considerations for each.

We put relatively large tiles (13 X13) on the floor & walls of our very tiny downstairs bathroom, and it looks great - really makes the room look much larger.

I used 12" X 12" tiles. I had a zillion cuts because of the border pattern I used. I got a deal on the tile, .79 ea, name brand.....Dal. I think the larger tiles are the latest look and my deal maybe is because of the smaller size. :0) Out with the old...in with the new! :0)

Here is a link that might be useful: my tiled kitchen floor

Thank you for your replies.

Thankfully, we are not doing the tile installation ourselves. I admire those of you who are able to do it! ccoombs1, the pattern of your tile looks really nice. And buehl, thanks for posting that picture. Your kitchen looks very much like the configuration of ours, and the 20" tiles look great.

Does anyone else have an opinion on this: Does larger tile in a smaller room give the perception of a larger room?

Again, I appreciate any and all opinions!

The 'does big tile make a room look bigger?' question has been asked a lot as more and more large format tiles hit the market-- new tech is making larger formats more cost effective, and within a couple years the big question for countertops is going to be granite vs. porcelain slabs.

Current thinking is that big tile makes rooms seem bigger. It's not wrong, but its short sighted. Right now, big is a novelty that attracts attention, slows down the eye. But as tile goes from big to HUGE this impact is going to go away, plus I think we are already getting used to it. When the novely fades, small rooms with big tile will look even smaller.

I think stretching or shrinking a space depends completely on the relationship between pattern, tile and grout; as well as the density of detail in the tile.

A highly detailed floor, whether it comes from contrasting grout, a complex pattern, or a tile with a lot happening-- tends to slow down the eye down when it travels accross the floor, literally serving as 'visual brakes'.

A very plain floor-- which can be acheived by matching the grout closely to a small tile, as well as using a larger format and a simple pattern-- gives your attention nothing to cling to, so it slides right across to whatever is on the other side.

A tile medallion or 'rug' work as brakes, too, but in a very small room it's important that the scale be right to keep the design from feeling crowded. IE: a narrow listello that attracts attention without consuming too much floor space.

To make a room seem larger, avoid a plain grid, avoid a plain tile, and have some contrast between tile and grout. I personally think 13x13s are a poor choice, since people will assume they are 12x, and count your floorspace accordingly.

My kitchen ended up long and narrow. It's going to work great because it gives me separate cooking and cleanup zones, but I wanted to use a pattern that wouldn't emphasize the proportions. I went with a herringbone pattern of 12x18s with a couple medallions in key areas to work as visual punctuation. A border would have been counter productive because it would have 'squeezed' the short axis of the room.

Seems to work great: the larger format keeps the pattern from being too busy, while the pattern keeps the eye from skidding right accross the short axis the way it would with a plain grid.

The arrows formed by a herringbone pattern pull the eye off in different directions, rather than encouraging straight lines, too.

In one of the master bath suites, we used an off the shelf 12x mosaic trav from Lowes: while the pattern is good, the fact that its a non-interlocking 12x still gives you straight grout lines from one side of the room to the other. So we 'pinwheeled' the 12xs with pretty blue porcleain 2x accents and punched out a few random 4xs from the mosaics, replaced them with a porcelain that matches perfectly color wise, but features a pattern pressed into the surface. Gives a lot of visual breaks, and some interesting detail that you only notice on closer inspection. Makes the room seem much larger.

My kitcen is only 8x11. I did 13", so you should be able to go a bit bigger. Don't have any pictures that show much of the floor, but you sort of get the idea here. :)

In planning our floor for our narrow (9 ft. wide) kitchen I laid out our large 18" tile straight, brickwork and diagonal to see the effects in the room. With the straight and brickwork patterns you could see only two full tiles in the middle (5 ft. between cabinets) which made the kitchen seem smaller. A smaller tile I think would have been better in this case. When laid on the diagonal, it looks like it is four tiles wide in the same space. It is an optical illusion, but it makes the kitchen seem wider to me. For fun I had people who later visited glance quickly a the floor, look away and guess how many tiles wide the floor was (between cabinets) every one said "four", when it's really only two. So if you want your kitchen to seem bigger in my opinion use the smaller (12-13") tiles in any pattern or use a larger tile in a "busier" pattern or diagonal to create the illusion of greater width. I highly suggest you get a quantity of tiles to try it out with, even if you have to get some cheap tiles in different sizes just to try out what you like.

-Jim