I both agree and disagree with you, Writersblock -- strange feeling, since in all my years on GW not sure I can recall opposing you!

Obviously agree that the lack of shade variation in today's mass-produced tile marks it as significantly different from earlier eras.

But Dal at least has a lot of colors in their budget-friendly semi-gloss and matte line that could be amazing as an homage vs purist re-creation to vivid (or more subtle) 20s-30s baths.

Combining the field with a handmade liner/border tile--especially one that's multi-colored--is something I often suggest to those who can't spend on the full meal deal. Especially since vintage colored baths often had tonal color combos, an exact match isn't crucial.

Of course with combining handmade and mass-produced tile, install skill and quote is even more important to work through prior to ordering!

OP/Wolfgang, you said none of the colors appealed, so obviously that's an issue.

(I don't know what Dal's site makeover has done with their color charts...maybe I need more coffee...so this is as of 2016).

Also "luxe" -- since I'm such a huge fan of Malibu tiles -- Mission Tile West's Malibu Revival Decos, which I want to steal whenever I spot them:

Below, a deliberate nod to -- but not purist recreation of -- colored tile baths with Dal's "Crisp Linen" S/G in 6 x 6 running bond. [Marmoleum floor and terrazzo shower base]

...and what I call a "Deconstructed Deco" bath, but with the more significant investment of Pratt and Larson handmade tile (old house, 70s addition)

I wanted to put this additional handmade tile resource here so it didn't get lost --

I'd investigate Seneca Tiles in Ohio and see how close they get to your desired price per SF.

They don't get much publicity on GW (kitchens has a little info if you search) but the samples I (quickly!) received from them are stunning and I do think their prices may still be one of the better values.

Also, while in line with more standard handmade tile prices, I always think

Pratt and Larson's Instagram does a better job conveying their range than their site. I have some other vendors to suggest but will have to circle back.

ps when evaluating, **DON'T FORGET TO FACTOR IN FREIGHT CHARGES**

so this is as of 2016

I agree with you on that chart, totally, House Vixen. But the last time I checked a couple of months ago, the color chart they showed me had colors that would have been great for 50s baths--lots of gray and black in the colors, so not the vivid clear colors in your chart. Colonial blue, dusty pinks, etc.

Possibly it depends on which lines you're looking at?

WB -- yes, maybe! Maybe it's all still available via special order, or maybe they dropped the vivid shades (which would be a major bummer as I've seen some awesome baths using the Dal Semi Gloss.

On another note -- shape -- I thought I'd include one of my favorite baths from Houzz, which uses subway but in a basketweave.

If your Spanish has a lot of curves (windows and archways) I don't know that I'd recommend it, but if it's more like this house (apparently one wing is new) then it could work well and make even the standard Dal or Olean in a white or off-white for field and specialty pieces more special. You could play with grout color, too, to emphasize or play down the pattern.

House (more pics linked)

Bath in house:

Very nice! I love the floor border.

BTW, forgot to say that if you're on a serious budget you can get real talavera or moroccan tile for a lot less than Mission, but you need to budget for a lot of overage and some swearing from your tile guy because the tiles won't all be nice and square and flat like the Mission ones are. Even Etsy has a lot of reasonably-priced decos in those styles.

That bathroom was my original inspiration!

That bathroom was in my saved folder too. I seriously considered doing that layout.

If you want authentic wall tile, then go with Heritage Tile

I never got a response from heritage tile about how much it would cost, but I asked for the cost of just their white subway tiles when I was at Clay Squared and they said it was $45/sf. Definitely way out of my budget!

The subway tile in these pics I just posted, as well as the ones I posted before, are all Daltile, and can be had for about 3.00 a foot, give or take.

Agree with Creative. We often do these vintage baths with just one accent color. And back to my first post above, check out Adex (a fraction of the cost compared to heritage, and others). Walls: http://adexusa.com/collections/neri/neri-white/

Floors: http://adexusa.com/collections/floors/#glazed-porcelain-mosaics

When using porcelain mosaics on the floor it is important to match colors closely to the ceramic wall tile. Many porcelain tiles will be a bit grey or yellow as compared to the white wall tile. White doesn't mean the same white. The Adex porcelain mosaics for the floor are a truer white, a good match to the Adex Neri ceramic wall tiles.

We are in the process of doing 5 baths in a vintage home, all are white with different color of accent tile (in this case, accent liners, rather than small mosaics), and with slight variation in design for each bath. No photos of those yet as they are in process. The client actually chose the accent liners based on other accessories (as Creative indicated above). She had a rug, for example, that she wanted to work with the accent color in one bath. This is a high end project but after evaluating 5 different suppliers (and much more expensive), we found Adex to be a great selection for multiple reasons. We did however order the accent liners from Heritage for one bath and from Interceramics for others:

http://interceramicusa.com/files/Interceramic_DEAC_Decorative_Accents_USHOJA_DE_CATALOGO-004714.pdf

These are not those baths but a couple others we have done in vintage homes

And back to my first post above, check out Adex (a fraction of the cost compared to heritage, and others)

Unfortunately they are not accurate to the period as the mosaic tiles are slightly pillowed. Original hex tiles are completely flat and not pillowed. Heritage makes the completely flat tile. I paid under $20 a square foot for my floor. I used the arctic white for my floor and it reads a true white.

cpartist, not pillowed at all, very flat. Heritage tile is great too but the white is not as white (many "true whites" out there with very subtle differences). We've had those side by side (and have used both as well as many others on various projects). The online photo is not a good representation of the color, as often is the case, hence the need for actual samples. http://adexusa.com/portfolio-item/admw522-floor-hex-2-white/

One thing I have noticed about retro tiling vs the real thing is application methods today make even the best replicated tiles fall short in comparison to a real original heritage bath feel. To really replicate you need a pro who still does mud not grout.

The above new period influenced baths are nice but to me they do not compare to my real 1920s bath tile work at all. I noticed any subway tile under twenty per sq ft lacked a crackle glaze, heritage included, this more than anything made it look too new build vs historic as well.

Because of this I went another way. I avoided trying to do a replica in my house because the difference in application is very noticeable, and IMO the new always falls flat and seem dishonest somehow in a home that still has the real thing. So I went with finishes that worked well in my older home but did not try to be something they are not.

Just one way to look at doing baths in an older house but certainly not the most followed way.

cpartist, not pillowed at all, very flat.

Online it looks like it's slightly pillowed and not completely flat which is why I didn't even sample them.

Heritage tile is great too but the white is not as white (many "true whites" out there with very subtle differences).

Agreed their white is not white but more of a light cream color, BUT their Arctic White is very white. I wound up using the Arctic White and it matches the Daltile beautifully.

We've had those side by side (and have used both as well as many others on various projects). The online photo is not a good representation of the color, as often is the case, hence the need for actual samples. http://adexusa.com/portfolio-item/admw522-floor-hex-2-white/

I will suggest Adex in the future since you now say it's a flat tile. Wanting a more authentic look is why I insisted on a completely flat and matte tile.

One thing I have noticed about retro tiling vs the real thing is application methods today make even the best replicated tiles fall short in comparison to a real orginal heritage bath feel. To really replicate you need a pro who still does mud not grout.

Roarah, I have to agree with you 1000%!!! If I had been renovating a period bathroom, I might have looked for a true master who could do mud.

The above new period influenced baths are nice but to me they do not compare to my real 1920s bath tile work at all. I noticed any subway tile under twenty per sq ft lacked a crackle glaze, heritage included, this more than anything made it look too new build vs historic as well.

Heritage does also have a line with crackle glaze (I think it's well north of $20 a square) but like you said, nothing will compare to the real thing. Sigh.

Because of this I went another way. I avoided trying to do a replica in my house because the difference in application is very noticeable, and IMO the new always falls flat and seem dishonest somehow in a home that still has the real thing. So I went with finishes that worked well in my older home but did not try to be something they are not.

Just one way to look at doing baths in an older house but certainly not the most followed way.

What finishes did you do? I could see paneling or bead board for dry walls.

I'm building a new craftsman inspired house so all my finishes are new and I'm really not trying to fool anyone. My hope is that once it's finished from the exterior someone looking at first glance will think, "Oh what a pretty old house. Too bad they updated the windows, replaced the porch railing and added sliders to the back of the house." Hoping that it will take a second glance for them to realize it's a new house.

Inside, I'm not fooling anyone with my 5" wide engineered oak floors, more open floor plan, rocker style switches, etc. The interior finishes will still "feel" craftsman but it's obvious to any old house lover (myself included) that it's not an old house and never was.

Cp your bath is beautiful, and Kat's too. I am sorry if my post sounded critical. I really like your choices and they look better than my orginal old bath does! It just looks newer not worse but different. I just wanted to point out another way to look at changing bath tile in older houses. I think house vixen approached her redo like me with a nod to the history but not an exact copy.

I used porcelain marble tile for the shower, that is not visible from much of the room, and a herringbone pattern cross cut porcelain travertine on the floor. I actually designed my bathroom as a nod to a 1920s dressing room, not a bath,for my house would not have originally had a master bath but rather an attached dressing room with dressing wardrobes and a sink. It was a very non conventional approach I took.

These are my inspirations

As promised, a couple more tile sources to check out, no idea re current price per SF.

SoCal-based BandW Tile, beloved by retrorenovation.com crowd, now American Tile Makers but old site still up

(just bought out, here's an article on what's going on with new owner)

Also in SoCal -- Busby Gilbert. Linking straight to their bathroom gallery as some of their glazes really stand out from the competitors (variation one will love or hate!)

Cp your bath is beautiful, and Kat's too. I am sorry if my post sounded critical.

No not at all. I didn't take it as critical but felt I should explain why I did what I did for my house. My thinking was there are lots of different reasons to do something and a lot depends on the age of the house, the reason for the creating the bath, etc.

Please forgive me as I'm just a frustrated old house lover (my first was a 1927 bungalow and my second was an 1898 victorian/colonial revival/not sure) and we had looked for an old house here in FL for 2 years and any old homes either had been destroyed of character, were not in the neighborhoods we wanted or had too many stairs/steps and we're retirement age.)

Roarah, what a great idea as to how to incorporate the master bath! Brilliant.

Yes, there are so many approaches to redoing or adding on a bath in an older home -- or putting a "new old" bath in a new home -- and I love to see and be involved with them. Except now I want Roarah's master dressing suite.

Jane Powell and other preservation-oriented folks basically give step-by-step instructions for recreating kitchen and baths, but Jane gave people the "grace and space" to put their mark on their homes.

Speaking of...per caption I'm squinting to read, this is a 1914 bath updated in the 30s with the awesome deco elements, then given new floor and wall tile sometime in the last few decades.

Photos for forum threads · More Info

Does it help that I'm a non-purist? Absolutely. Gives a little more freedom to be creative, and pull from ideas and colors across eras. So many vintage baths and kitchens had *really clever* storage solutions (since many were modest in size) and I love seeing and sharing ideas for re-creating those.

And let's face it: people are VERY comfortable with white for baths and kitchens. Especially white subway. My favorite super-meticulous tile pro does white subway or gray large format over and over and appreciates when he has the opportunity for a bit more of a challenge/variety. Gotta give a shoutout to Dragonfly's client who used that 6 x 6 white running bond, at least!

Is a white subway bath the most appropriate for a 20s-30s Spanish? Probably not. If the OP ends up going that direction, no problem. It'll be fun to celebrate the "after" with them!

[There are people who rip out their colored tile baths for white subway, which I find more...disheartening. However, one of them gave birth to me so....]

I was always nosing into local estate sales to see what the bathrooms looked like, and I still do. It is so awesome when you find a real gem for inspiration. Rorah, you are so lucky to have something preserved and I can see how a replica would fall short. I agree, even Heritage's 'Crackle' line was not quite the same as the actual natural crazing that happens to tile over time.

When we took the plastic 60's tile off the wall, we discovered the bath originally had tile at all, but instead, scored plaster! We kept a section of it intact behind the cabinet and noted what it for anyone in the future.

My kitchen has scored plaster too Kat!

Ok, another potential 30s inspiration due to **shapes** (but of course I include the colors!). Forgot I had this bookmarked.

Peach 3x6 done in basketweave plus muted green 4x4 running bond. With deco liner, black trim, and fantastic tile floor. IMO you could do the 3x6 in white but would have to commit to a second color of field.

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Photos for forum threads · More Info

Backstory per (still?) current owner is that original homeowner was a tile store owner. Next owner tiled on top, but DIY renovators popped off tile and scraped off mastic to find original amazing work. That luck...is rarely my story!

Love Jane Powell! She's my go to when I'm at a loss.

Fascinating conversation. I love reading everyone's takes. We're definitely conflicted in wanting to keep it an old house inside and out (there's only a handful of 20s and 30s houses left in this beach town) and not creating something garish and wrong.

Best thread in awhile!! Just bookmarking for now and happy to see all the input. Soon I'll be re-doing a small bath in my 1941 home and all this tile talk could be conflicting, in a good way. :)

Love that muted green, house vixen! That's what I'm going for. I just received my sample tile and it is really similar to that, except it's 6x6. I was really worried because on the website the color looked so beige, and in warm light it looks beige too, but in cool bright light it's a really nice subtle green! Best of all it's only $4.31/sf! It's the same tile as here:

Vintage apothecary bathroom · More Info

Now I just need to decide on pinwheel or hex tile for the floor.

And of course, there's always pink vintage... :)

Ooh, I love that bath, Skitt, especially the way they got in a shower niche and made it look like it had always been there.

Dragonfly, is that floor terrazzo? I've never seen such an elaborate inlay done in terrazzo before, if it is. I think I'd keep a rug down, but otherwise I love the bath.

Sigh. Just looked yesterday at a house that still had a cheerful yellow tub, but everything else had been replaced with beige and white. Pity.

We think the crazy floor is terrazzo (obviously not our work). A clue is the base of the same material as that's how that was done.

On another note, someone mentioned the allure of the old school mud prep applications. I think they said mud as opposed to grout, but grout has nothing to do with prep work. It's really "mud work" verses "surface mount". Mud work was the standard for floors and walls years ago, and yes, we still are among the few that do mud floors as much as possible. Mud walls? Yes we do but only when specified (expensive work). There are alternatives to make a job look like it's mud work. I won't go into all that. But, for those vintage tile enthusiasts, here's a 20 cent lesson: The only way to really tell if it's mud work (other than sound tests), is the visual difference, such as that depicted in the attached professional, finely illustrated example:). Everything has to return back to the wall because the mud protrudes beyond the plane of the wall surface. Let's take a wainscot as an example (you know, that 2/3rds or so up the wall tile). Imagine you are looking at the side view of the wall. The prominent difference (most common tell-tale) is the use of a "mud cap" at the top of the tile as opposed to the surface mount bullnose more common today.

Fun thread. We are trying to school our apprentices so they are familiar with the craftsmanship of years gone by. We old folks who learned the old methods won't be around forever and who is going to work in those historic homes, and stay true to their original craftsmanship?

You can simulate a mud bed by using two layers of cement board so you can use a mud cap instead of a bullnose.

Also, most grout used historically (pre war anyway) seems to have been concrete colored, so even a historical-style tile job may not look quite right with a color matched or too-white grout.

Luckily I have been spared this because my house is only 50 years old and originally used bullnose instead of mudcaps and used colored grouts. The bathrooms were long gone. One of the replacement baths was mud bed though. It was just totally wrong for the house and not well done (just very solid and heavy) so it had to come out.

Thanks Lyndee Lee. It's been our craft for over 30 years and we feel fortunate to work in these historical homes as they are a treasure. And thanks to people like you, the appreciation and we think "responsibility" to preserve these historical treasures is alive and well. Yes, palimpset, there was basically only three grout colors: white, black and grey and all were white cement based. Those colors were altered with powdered dyes (all a formula, not pre-mixed). And their sealer? Mineral spirits! And as it was all "fresh set" (screed their mud, then sprinkle it with portland cement, and they soaked their tiles, especially if terra cotta, and then beat them one by one into the mortar bed). And then they used a cement based joint filler = all one entity. No wonder it was so solid? It all became ONE. So you folks with true vintage tile and tile craftsmanship, try to observe it from a different perspective....THAT's some serious business, methods engineered over the ages, meant to last for hundreds of years. Many of these methods were brought over from Europe with our immigrants (they knew about old and lasting).

Gosh I wish I still had the tilework in both my previous houses. They were gorgeous.

I came across this house for sale in the Hancock Park area of Los Angeles. The bathrooms are a hoot. Pics of them start around pic 18. https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/184-S-Hudson-Ave-Los-Angeles-CA-90004/20779201_zpid/

I'm so glad houses like that still survive intact! But those kitchen countertops are a horror show!

Very cool old house. Skitt, I think it's more the way the stone also goes up the backsplash (and the fact that it all clashes horribly with the cabinet color).

Is the pink bathroom for vampires? I see someone has removed the medicine cabinet at some point, leaving the room mirrorless. I do like the ocean wave tile in the teal and yellow bath, though.

I recommend b & w tile! They carry ‘30s colors and their prices are reasonable (though they have increased since we used them.. and with their new owners)

A friend has a Spanish style house built in the ‘20s to ‘30s and the bathrooms are original- one is black and white and burgundy and the other has dreamy lilac fixtures (bw has this shade in tile, it’s amazing but one of their pricey options) and black and white tile.

We recently created a 1950s bathroom and our guys used mud set in the shower area, and on the vanity. They prefer it that way because it will outlast anything else out there. There are people that still do it and have passed it on :)

Wolfgang, my daughter rents in Hancock Park.

Cpartist and Wolfgang, why is that house so cheap, relatively speaking? Is there something about the neighborhood?

Hey, skitt, do you know about the Daltile mosaic pattern designer?

You can create mosaic floor patterns with off-the-rack daltile. Here are two that are kind of like the expensive tile in your inspiration bathroom:

ETA I think you can use other product lines than show up in the designer, but I don't know how to get them to show up. I know they have a better green in the 2" tile but I couldn't place it in the template. They definitely have the right sizes in their Keystone collection for all three colors.

Thanks for that, I will definitely play around with it! I still haven't decided on the floor and it's driving me crazy! The floors I like best look like they are from an earlier period than the 1930s look I'm going for, but no one but me is ever even going to notice.

All this talk about mud has made me realize a potential difficulty in the tile design I want for my other bathroom. Maybe an expert can weigh in? I really like subway tile with a vertical edge like the one in this picture

As far as the floor, you know, that green/black/white combo looks right for the period, but in the 30s they would never have used something with such direct coordination to the wall tile. I think a real 30s floor for those wall colors would more likely have been something more like this (as close as I can get with the available daltile colors--I think it would have a more maroon colored dot, perhaps):

I can't think of any time in history that color combos have been as bold as in 30s bath design (particularly the relationship between wall and floor tile), and if you look at the surviving ones, they almost never seemed to pick up an exact color used elsewhere in the room as a major element, and they sure didn't shrink away from lurid floors.

But it might make you feel better if you take a look at the Friederichsen catalog for 1929, which covers a huge variety of suggested designs, including basketweave, hex, and pinwheel:

https://retrorenovation.com/2013/02/19/112-patterns-mosaic-floor-tile-amazing-colors-friederichsen-floor-wall-tile-catalog-1929/

I think you are right about the quarter round. But I also think that the flatness is one of the things that makes the mint bath look fresh. Compare the black tiling around the niche in that one with the smaller bath in the comments, for example. The latter is certainly more like the effect of old tiling.

I've looked at every picture of 1930s bathrooms that I can find and for the most part the floors match the walls exactly. Same shiny tile, but often in a large hexagon shape instead like this:

Or the floors are linoleum:

I don't really care for those looks, so I'm going to have to do something different because I'm not creating a museum piece but something I have to live with!

I'm really liking the floor this guy did:

As for the quarter round, it's for my other bathroom (I'm doing two) and will use white subway tile. I just need to figure out how I want to trim it out.

Yeah, they did do monochromatic schemes where everything was a pretty close match, but they were also a lot more daring than we are. Click for the full effect.:

Note the shower curtain and the unmatched towels.

And I still say nobody today would do this:

or even this. Look at the larger pic to see that the floor is very purple compared to the wall tile and full of yellow accents that have nothing to do with the rest of the tile. We'd say it was "off," but it was totally intentional:

And a lot of what you get when you google "1930s bathroom" is either restored or someone's new bath that's meant to look old.

Of course, not everything was on-trend back then, either, anymore than it is today, even less so. For instance, by the 20s a clawfoot was the ultra-low-budget tub choice, but I see plenty of them getting put into "restored" baths today. And they did exist, so it's not exactly wrong, either, although if you had the budget for fancy tile you most likely wouldn't have done it back then.

Hey, my next-door neighbor just finished putting in new kitchen cabinets with a cathedral arch, because he likes 'em and doesn't care about what's trendy.

So yeah, a lot of earlier stuff still went on. I've seen plenty of 20s baths with small black and white hex that was original, for instance, although it was decidedly not à la page when it was put in. But they didn't care.

As for the quarter round, it's for my other bathroom (I'm doing two) and will use white subway tile. I just need to figure out how I want to trim it out.

Yeah, I got that. I was just pointing out that despite all the completely true things that were said up-thread about mud beds, these days most people these days would probably prefer the flatter look of contemporary tiling methods.

Just for fun, here's a page from the 1929/1930 Standard Plumbing catalog with suggested color combos for baths using their colored fixtures. Center of each group is the fixture color, bottom floor color, top right wall color, top left " the dominant tone in the draperies."

Should note that this page is faded quite a bit compared to the rest of the catalog. Look at the top right combo, the "Orchid of Vincennes." Here's their actual example of the colors in a bath:

Writer's block--I don't think $8M for what is a fixer for most buyers in the area is low. Hancock Park is a great neighborhood and this particular house is in a prime, no excuses location. The most expensive homes sell in the 12-15M range. They will be the same size or larger but will have close to an acre of land. Hancock Park does not get westside $/sf numbers.

Thanks, wolfgang. It's just that that's not that much different from what $8m would buy in some neighborhoods near me, but what sells for $1m out there would be about $300K here.