Bathroom tile

A bathroom is the one room where the tile is doing a job as well as looking like one. The floor has to grip when it is wet, the walls have to shed water for twenty years, and the shower has to be waterproof underneath the tile — not because of it. So the set here is chosen for those three things first: slip-rated porcelain for the floor, large formats and panels for the walls, and mosaics where a shower floor needs to fall to a drain.

Within that the range is wide. Marble-look porcelain in panels for a wall with two joints, subway and zellige for a wall with many, wood-look for a floor that carries through from the bedroom, and the natural stone and mosaic lines for the niche and the curb. The showroom has full wet-room vignettes built out, so you can stand in the corner and see how the wall meets the floor.

What we do first, before the tile, is the waterproofing — a bonded membrane, the standard's movement joints, a linear drain if the floor wants one. It is on the proposal as its own line, because it is the part of a bathroom you will never see and the part that decides whether the tile lasts.