We have arrived at what feels like an enormous turning point for the bathroom and the star of it is the new marble tile!! It is just so completely a WORK OF ART. When we started, I knew I wanted a marble in here. I love the refined feel and beauty of the natural stone. And a carrara style marble I am drawn to every time I see it. From there, we had some decisions to make about the different types and styles of marble. Some of the main decisions were honed versus polished, size of the hex tile, and different veining looks.
Personally I love honed marble. Polished has a more reflective finish, closer to a shiny porcelain tile. One good thing about polished is it is easy to wipe done. Honed has a more matte finish, and almost all the time I really like a more matte of anything. Unless the object is MEANT TO be a really dramatic high gloss, lacquered look as a statement or feature, I prefer as matte as possible. Honed marbles strikes me as having such depth and seems authentic, aged, and rich.
Another reason we opted for honed is this is a floor application, and it can be much less slippery when wet than polished. (Although the large amount of grout with hex tiles would help with that.)
@flooranddecor, mood improver
I really love hex tile. It feels historic to me, but can still be found at good prices. The next fun decision was between two inch or one inch hexes. I went with one inch because I like the small scale pattern.
My only concern with doing one inch hexes was that the veining wouldn’t be as noticeable, and I like a pretty veined look.
I shopped at floor & decor who has a lot of selection and they also offer free design services for anyone. The tile we chose was the carrara white hexagon marble mosaic. IT CHECKED ALL MY BOXES and was at the lowest price I have seen. I was very satisfied with how noticeable the veining and color variance was once all the tiles were laid out across an entire room. As with many things, the pattern comes to life much better on the broad scale than when looking at only an individual piece, in this case a 12 x 12 inch square of tile.
One question I got frequently last time I shared about using a hex tile was if they are all laid individually and the amazing and convenient answer is definitely no! They come in 12 x 12 inch squares of tile and are easy to move around corners because you can pop out the shapes you don’t need and then trim the mesh on the underside with scissors. We did this whole project without using a wet saw. All we needed was some tile nippers to cut some hexes in half along the edges. This is another one of the great things about hex tile.
The installation was HONESTLY FUN and represents moving closer to our finished master bath! I love using high quality, natural materials. Especially when decorating with neutrals, the natural beauty becomes such a feature in a room. I feel like this tile would look good with TRULY ANY wall color – including something bold, or simply white.
The post about our finished master bathroom is now here.
