Bathroom tiles for House 17: Finding the right combo

I have a confession. I’ve never ever bought bathroom tiles before this. And I did not know that buying tiles could be such a mind-boggling process.

When House17 came along, the bathrooms were fairly decent and at first, I did not plan to renovate them. I didn’t mind the colourful mosaic, even the beige floor tile.

Except for one thing.

This row of stones, cast in concrete! Ugh. What were they thinking? Can I live with them? I probably could but then I thought, why should I?

The stones were laid in all 3 bathrooms. I wanted to remove the stones alone but my contractor said it would break the waterproofing seal and I would risk a leak. Or I could just redo the floor tiles and leave the walls. Long story short, I decided to demo 2 bathrooms and leave one untouched. (Yup, the stones are still in that one.)

When I was certain my bathroom tiles were going, I reached out to Feruni Ceramiche to collaborate on this project. The reason I chose Feruni was simple. Their tiles are gorgeous! And happily for me, they said yes!

Thus shopping for bathroom tiles began

At the showroom, I felt overwhelmed. So many tiles, so many patterns, textures, shapes and infinite combinations. Mind-boggled, alright. Fortunately, Charlotte, the Assistant Manager of Feruni’s Petaling Jaya showroom was on hand to guide me through it.

She asked me about the style of bathroom tiles I was shooting for. I showed her the inspo photos on my Pinterest board. Then, she walked me through the showroom and presented a few combinations that could work in my spaces.

Feruni tiles are generally in muted hues like natural stone, cement, blacks, whites and wood grain. You won’t find a chilli red tile in here. And they play on texture. One style of tile may have a smooth, matt or coarse feel to it, depending on where and how you want to use it.

What I was most impressed with was their iShape service. You can choose any tile from Feruni and have them cut it into any of these 9 shapes.

I’ve been really drawn to the Rhombus lately. So it was definitely going home with me. While I like the Rhombus forming the “cube” design, there’s a lot that can be created from this versatile shape. Here are a few from Feruni’s website. Lovely, aren’t they?

The rhombus is the new hexagon, people.

Go prepared

It would be helpful to go to any tile shop with your room layout and measurements in hand. What you’ll need is:

• The floor plan with the measurements for the length and depth of the room. Don’t forget the height of the room, if you’re tiling all the way up.
• Also, measure your doors and windows. They’ll need to subtract your door and window space from the total sq. footage of tiles required.
• Mark on your floorplan the position of the vanity, shower and/or bath and toilet. Don’t forget any columns or nooks.

With my plan, Charlotte came up with a few design options for me. All in 3D glory. (The bathrooms in the 3D drawing looks spacious. If only…)

In the end, I picked Triangles for the guest bathroom (but with a lighter coloured floor tile) and the Marble Chevron for my master bath. Charlotte even matched the right grout colour for me.

With the design set, the special shapes needed to be cut. That took a bit of time. The triangles took longer than expected and I did need to push the date for my other installations.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of the finished bathroom for the simple reason — it isn’t finished yet. We’re still waiting for the vanity tops and I didn’t want to show you incomplete bathrooms. So, you’ll just have to wait a bit longer for my bathroom reveal.

Bathroom tile shopping tips

One last thing, do order 5-10% more bathroom tiles than your space needs. Because they may chip. Or your tiler may drop one. I ended up re-ordering because my master bathroom ceiling height went up a little higher than before and even the 5% extra wasn’t enough to cover. As always, the unexpected happens.

If you’re planning to have custom shaped tile like I did, you’ll need to factor in the “tile cutting time” in your reno timeline.

And oh, one last, last thing. Tiling irregular shaped bathroom tiles is not a walk in a park. You do need to get a good, experienced tiler who is patient enough to make sure everything matches up. Labour charges may be higher too.

Finally, I’ll share some photos of the displays at Feruni. I hope they’ll trigger some ideas for your bathroom reno.

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This post is in collaboration with Feruni Ceramiche. The tiles are sponsored but opinions are entirely my own.

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