I love terracotta tiles! I am planning on using vintage tiles that are also thick. The advice I got from both my fabulous tile guy and the designer at fireclay tile is to use a thicker picture frame moulding around the feature tile to mask the thickness difference. Cutting of the tile should not be a problem according to my tile guy. He did say that he may need to use thicker mud base to get the tile level with field tile and the grout may not be super thin. So I am thinking about it.. My vintage tile

I'm glad to see these images, folks. On another thread I talked about using paint to unite sections of the kitchen and these photos reinforce that idea. I sometimes find a look-at-me tall backsplash to be a dividing, not uniting, feature in a design. My only concern with a short backsplash is any "Penny Catcher" wide surface at the top of it. In my old little kitchen, the Formica was a 3-4 inch high piece with an inch-plus ledge at right angles for the top. If you walked the room you would find on the backsplash ledge a number of coins, paperclips, lost buttons, pretty stones, singleton batteries, &c. We propped greeting cards and postcards on it also, but as the kitchen shifted, we had a gap at wall and they began to slip behind the Formica. (We found them plus a couple uncashed checks at demolition day.) As long as you avoid the Penny Catcher ledge--perhaps by rounding or planing off the top edge if there's width to the backsplash product--a short backsplash can solve a lot of design needs. And it's economical. Thanks so much for this conversation. It reinforces my hope to get our short backsplash installed by end of summer.

I have a similar question five years later: Is the 4" matching back splash now out of style? And how long will it stay out of style? Doubt that it would be possible to get a full matching back splash 14 years after the home was built. I am considering removing the 4" back splash and going with a complementary tile or, perhaps, a colorful wallpaper. Thoughts as to how long the short back spash will stay out of style? (I'm old enough to remember bell bottoms - the first time they were in style.)

thanks Sophie and Avanti. I should also add that these tiles are .45 inches thick. https://www.homedepot.ca/en/home/p.2-inch-x-4-inch-bianco-polished-brick-mosaic-tile.1000664214.html these are the tiles. I assume I will need the square notch trowel as the tiles are quite thick