How to Choose Tiles for a Small Bathroom

A small bathroom shows every choice you make, so a few decisions carry more weight here than anywhere else in the house.

Go lighter, not darker. Light-coloured tiles — whites, light greys, soft beiges — bounce more light around a small room and read as more spacious than a dark palette, even at the exact same square footage.

Use fewer, larger tiles. Counter-intuitively, bigger tiles make a small room feel bigger, not smaller — fewer grout lines mean the eye reads the floor or wall as one continuous surface instead of a grid of small pieces.

Matte or satin finish for the floor. A glossy floor tile looks striking in photos but gets slippery the moment it is wet, and a bathroom floor is wet more often than not. Save the glossy finish for a feature wall instead.

Carry the tile up the wall. Running the same tile from the floor partway up the wall (or into the shower area) removes a visual break and makes the whole room read as one space rather than a floor and a wall competing for attention.

Bring a sample home before you decide — a tile looks different under bathroom lighting than it does under showroom lights, and the only way to know for certain is to see it in the actual room.