Tile mosaic floors straight or on the diagonal?

6 years ago

I'm in the middle of remodeling our powder room. We have 12" square tiles on the diagonal in the hallway adjacent to the powder room. The same tiles were in the powder room, but I had to remove them in the remodeling process. I've selected some square mosaic tiles for the new floor, but I can't decide if they should be horizontal or diagonal. The powder room has been enlarged to 5'-0 x 4'-9".

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MongoCT

6 years ago

Very much personal opinion, but I'd run the mosaic in a straight pattern. It's a case where there is a change in the tile size and tile color. In two different rooms. That will normally be blocked off from one another by a closed door. So I don't see a need to force the mosaic into a pattern that may cause it to look awkward.

I think the mosaic tile and the hallway tile go fine together color-wise, there is not a jarring effect on the eye when going from one material to the other.

Regardless, I'd consider cutting back the hallway tile and adding a saddle at the door threshold to act as design transition across the threshold. The threshold can act as a physical transition, as well as a color and pattern transition, easing your eyes along from one room to the other.

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Comments (11)

chispa
6 years ago
Without seeing photos of the two materials and where they meet, no one will be able to answer your question.
Erin
Original Author
6 years ago
I'm sorry, here's a photo. Does this help?
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Almost always, DIAGONAL is aesthetically better. Because it does not emphasize the outline of the room, it makes the space seem less restricted: that means it will seem larger. No one has mentioned another fact: most small bathrooms are not exactly square! When you lay tiles on the square, you will inevitably discover this, and the irregularity will show. This will not appear as readily with the diagonal tiling. A third point: when you lay on the square, the number of tiles may not come out even (that is, to a whole number of tiles). Thus is you start with whole tiles along one side, you will have fractional tiles on the opposite side. Looks bad! To escape this, you have to tile from the center out, with cut tiles all around the edges. That makes up for any inconvenience involved with diagonal tiling. So, I count that as 3-0 in favor of diagonal tiling. I would even add a fourth point: when people see your tiles done diagonally, they see that you really knew what you were doing.
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We just remodeled and put tile in 3 areas. The two smaller baths have tile set on the diagonal (13" tiles) and the look is great. For the large area of kitchen flowing into entry into laundry and powder room, it was set straight. I figured with a large area, you're not always looking at a room straight on and depending on your vantage point you get a diagonal. I also like the look of the straight set tile. In our situation, it cost more to have tile set on diagonal because of extra labor and tile. For us, the bigger tile issue was the workmanship and getting the floors as level as possible before the work was done. We had to do quite a bit of sub-floor work (about 1 and 1/2 day labor). Then, the tile layers must have mixed up grout wrong in 1 bath because we had lots of grout cracking there within a few days (they called it faulty grout-didn't fool me). That job needed to be redone. Be sure you know the quality of work that the tile layers do. Ideally, someone should be there to oversee their work. I know from others who have remodeled that tile has sometimes needed to be redone or become a source of conflict over quality of work.
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I can't answer your question, but I found this picture on Houzz. The tiles are laid out differently on the floor compared to the walls. Running bond on the walls and herringbone on the floor. Looks fine to me. But I love variety. Your walls will need to be extremely flat to do the large format tile with tight grout lines. 12x18 tiles laid on the diagonal seem awkward to me with the dimension of the backsplash space available. Draw it out on graph paper, to scale, to see if you'd like it. Herringbone in that size might work, but you might not have enough space to really pick up the pattern effectively. Again a drawing would be very helpful to you to decide. [Contemporary Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/contemporary-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2103) by San Francisco Media & Bloggers Lucy McLintic This one might have tiles in your size, but its really hard to tell: [Contemporary Kitchen[(https://www.houzz.com/photos/contemporary-kitchen-ideas-phbr1-bp~t_709~s_2103) by Kailua Architects & Building Designers Archipelago Hawaii Luxury Home Designs This post was edited by enduring on Sat, Jul 5, 14 at 1:23
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My floor is diagonal and my backsplash (12" tiles) is also diagonal. Looks good to me!! In fact, I think it's nice to carry the diagonal theme in more than one place.
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User
6 years ago
I was thinking you could go either way but seeing the tile now, I would lay them straight. It's a very busy tile colorwise and diagonal layout always adds a little more busyness. But I would pick a tile that has the same tone as your hallway as one of the colors so there is some relationship between them. I would eliminate the orange and brown tones all together.
nicole___
6 years ago
Straight.
Erin
Original Author
6 years ago
mayflowers, do you have a tile suggestion? We were thinking we would paint the bathroom a rust color, so we wanted a tile that would help with the transition between the light beige hallway tiles and the dark color of the room. The fixtures and trim will be white.
User
6 years ago
Are the colors in the rest of your home warm or was rust chosen randomly?

I think a smooth transition is more important in the flooring materials than whether the tile matches a paint color that you might want to change in the future. With the gray grout in the hallway, I'd definitely use a tile that I could grout gray. There are literally thousands of tile choices out there. Where are you tile-shopping?
Erin
Original Author
6 years ago
The grout in the hallway is definitely not gray. It is "sandstone"; obviously beige. The lighting at the bathroom doorway is probably not very good. We will be using matching grout for the old and new tiles.

The other floors on the first floor are cherry (vinyl) and the upstairs is oak. We have a mix of warm and cool colors on the walls, but the hallway and living room are warmer shades of beige.

We got these mosaic tiles at Menards.
PRO
Designer Drains
6 years ago
Diagonal looks better in my eyes.
Erin
Original Author
6 years ago
I started second guessing my choice so I picked up this white tile. What do you think?
User
6 years ago
last modified: 6 years ago
The different shape is a better choice. I would choose a warmer white but if your choices are limited, it's not a bad match. Adding a threshold as Mongo suggested would look best, but you're stuck with whether you should match it to the warm white of the hallway or the cool white of the powder room. Does that tile come in any other colors?

Tile mosaic floors straight or on the diagonal?

MongoCT

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Tile mosaic floors straight or on the diagonal?

MongoCT

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nicole___

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