Should the grout be the same color? Not necessarily. Will it look weird to use a darker gray on the floor and a lighter gray in the shower? Not at all. Any recommended colors for the shower and floor tiles along these lines? I've been getting stuff at Lowe's and they carry MAPEI Warm gray for the subway tile, and silver for the hex, if you lke a darker grey for the hex. Silver is actually a medium grey, but it'll appear alot darker with the white tile. Our bathroom isn't perfectly square. I think a colored grout seam that is uneven will be really obvious(that's my understanding where you would do any flubbing). Can you grout just the seam white? Can you skip grout and caulk it? Any suggestions here? Grout everything on the floor the same color. it'll actually show up more if you try doing what you suggested. It'll literally draw attention to it. What you want to dpo is make sure that you're square to the most obvious walls from the door. Especially with the hex, it won't be quite as obvious as you think, unless it's WAY out, and then nothing you can do will hide it, even using a blending color grout. One other thing-- that joint where the floor hits the walls should be caulked, but still caulk it with a caulking that matches the grout, both color AND texture. Does anyone know what the measure is for hex tile and subway? For subway, use unsanded, and for the hex, use sanded.

Is there any reason to think the synthetic inside is going to make the tile fail in some way? FWIW, I'm pretty sure The Tile Shop and other chains are selling the same Chinese made product. This is not a high budget project in a big home. I'm a single girl in a condo and I want to upgrade the bath for me and for sale one day. I had fallen in love with some thassos basketweave when I was doing my shopping, but putting that $40/sq ft in my 900 sq ft condo (mind you, I like the fact that I don't take up much space) wouldn't make much sense. I wouldn't make back the investment when it comes time to sell my unit and move on and using thassos on the floor would eat up so much of my budget that I'd be reduced to using cheap subway on the walls. I love the look of cheap subway times, but with the company that makes the porcelain chair rail I wanted out of business, I didn't find my trim options attractive. Mongo, the tile in your picture is beautiful!

Here's several sources of irregularities in a tile installation: Unless the tile installer shimmed out the backing to compensate for any wavy studs, you will have a wavy backing, and the tiles will follow the waves ... occasionally one will hit the crest of a wave just right and you have a corner like you see. 2 - With a square-edged tile all the tile installer has to do is wipe ALL the grout off the face of the tiles and it's all even. With a rounded edge the visible grout width will vary depending on how much grout is wiped away from the rounded edge to reveal the joint. That's part of the "charming hand-made" look. Had they known that you wanted machine-like precision in the grout lines they may have been able to warn you that the rounded edges of that tile are not conducive to precise grout joint appearance unless you want to pay for someone to use calipers and Q-tips on all the joints. 3 - Tile size variation depending on where they were in the kiln. It's tiny, but it adds up over the course of several rows of tile. 4 - Those spacers are not "machined" they are cast or pressed into the clay before it's fired, and subject to shrinking. They are a help to the tile setter, not any guarantee of absolute precision. ---------------- As for the spacers, unless your walls were perfectly squared and ceiling perfectly level, some of the joints probably needed to be widened a scooch so the tiles would line up properly with the tiles on the other wall. the easy way to do this is to slip a spacer into the joint and twist it. My tile installer (and contractor) had to compensate for a 1 inch difference between one side of the alcove's rear wall and the other. He did it by starting about three rows up from the rim of the tub and widening the grout gaps a tiny bit on the high side, tapering back to normal on the low side. It looks great, but it took him the better part of three days to do all the measuring, marking, and scooching, then letting each couple of rows set up so he wouldn't mess it up with the next rows.

The home depot associate (tile specialist) suggested 1/16 spacers but use a flexible mortar to allow expansion/contraction. (I may not have said that correctly.) I will get advice on specific thinset and grout from my contact at the tile shop (who was a tile contractor). Thanks everyone!