Bathroom tiles have literally been the only thing we’ve had an argument about throughout the whole process so far… and I think it’s because I wasn’t being decisive enough. I went to the sales office one evening in late November, still thinking we had a month or two to make our choices, and took a picture of every single tile option, in very poor light.
Normally I make decisions quickly and Barry tends to just agree because I make good aesthetic choices/he can’t be bothered arguing – delete as applicable. We got a call the day after I took the pictures to say we needed to come in to make our choices pretty much immediately. We were then working from the pictures, and these tiles were all white, ivory, cream, beige or grey, it was like snow blindness.
How to choose bathroom tiles for a new build quickly
If you’re in the same boat, to maximise your thinking time, I’d recommend you…
- Make a trip to the sales office during daylight hours
- Take photos of every single one of the tile choices. You will feel like an idiot, but it’s worth it
- Make a note of any that catch your eye right there and then
- If you think you’re going to get flooring through the builder, take a photo of all of these as well, so you can envisage the whole room
- Get rid of the definite nos first for clarity
- Strike a balance between boring and longevity (there’s usually no exciting choices anyway)
- Be decisive
- If you can’t finalise your choices before your appointment, make a shortlist to take with you
The bathroom wall tiles we chose
I’ve already written about our flooring preferences, before telling you what we chose for the walls… but these are the actual pictures I’m trying to match the flooring tiles to.
Bathroom walls are tiled as standard to full height in showers and half height and windowsills for the rest of the room. The WC is all the marble effect tile. The main bathroom, we chose the textured tile for just above the long side of the bath, and the other everywhere else. For our bathroom, we have the plain antique white tile in the shower and the patterned one in the main bit of the bathroom – everyone else seems to have done that the other way round. And for Scarlett’s, the plain one is in the shower, and the textured one is everywhere else and by then we’d lost the will.
What else can you choose?
You can choose floor tiles from the builder to match (and, of course, pay for them), but we wanted more flexibility with style, so we decided to source them separately. You get white sanitaryware as standard, and we also got to choose vanity units for the WC and our ensuite from a limited range.
We were happy that we’d decided in advance of going in to make our choices, as we went in, chose our kitchen, bathroom tiles and vanity units and an extra plug, all done, signed and paid for within an hour, which is good going – they said it would take two. Boom.