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Bathroom renovation--tile direction for bath tub wall and floor

9 years ago

We are doing a renovation of our main bathroom in our newly-purchased home. I have 12x24 porcelain tiles in mind and wanted to know if the horizontal direction of the tiles on the bathtub wall should match the flooring as well? Or is it okay to lay the tiles running up and down when you enter the bathroom? Hope this question makes sense.

Featured Answer

Jill Wood

9 years ago

This is not my bathroom(it's the same tile I'm using on my bathroom floor). This person ran the tile horizontally on the floor and behind the tub because she wanted to make the bathroom appear wider.

Comments (7)

christina222_gw
9 years ago
If I understand what you're saying correctly I am planning to do just that in my bathroom, which is similar to yours in size and layout. I'm going to have the tile running lengthwise towards the tub (mine are 10 x 16) and on the wall I'm putting them horizontally, with the log side parallel to the tub.
badgergal
9 years ago
last modified: 9 years ago
There are no hard and fast rules for tile orientation. You can run them whichever way looks best to you. My daughter and my son both recently redid their bathrooms and put 12x24 tiles stacked vertically on the walls. They didn't have to decide on vertical vs horizontal for the floor because they used 24x24 squares on the floor. In my bath I have 10x13 vertical on the walls and 18x18 on the diagonal on the floor.

IMO the large square tiles make their small floor spaces look bigger. Do your tiles come in squares too? Maybe you could put them on the floor. If you stay with the 12x24s on the floor placing then horizontal ( long side parallel to the tub may make your room look wider). You can still put the wall tiles whichever way you want.

Here's a couple shots of my DD's tiles

Good luck in your remodel.
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joelovesjennie
Original Author
9 years ago
Thanks this helps tremendously. My husband thinks bathroom will look wider if the tiles are perpendicular to the tub. But you seem to say the opposite. It's good to know there are no rules to this, though. I personally am leaning towards laying them parallel to tub.
LE
9 years ago
We were agonizing over all this last summer. I ended up drawing out all the options to scale on graph paper. Some were clearly just going to look better or be simpler to install than others, but I didn't have the experience to predict that in advance. It took a little time, but was so worth it! (Plus it prevented me from telling the tile setter I wanted A to line up with B and B to line up with C when that was geometrically impossible!)
amberm145
9 years ago
I'm planning to go in and lay my tiles on the floor myself and play with patterns and directions as soon as the drywallers are done. There aren't any rules, it depends on what works for you.

That bigger tiles make a room look bigger is often repeated. But this is only true if the size isn't so big that you don't have any full tiles. If you only have a couple of cut tiles, it has the opposite effect.
christina222_gw
9 years ago
That looks nice. It's making me rethink my plan.

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