Let’s talk about tile for a mid-century update. You’ve got options. You can go with bold custom color in your favorite shade or recreate a bathroom in powder blue or Mamie pink.
You can get playful with shapes and even textures.
Not to make this scary but … tile choice also runs the risk of tipping into a trend that will ultimately put a timestamp on your whole remodel.
When I’m walking through a remuddled house with a client – one that has one or several very dated remodels layering over it’s original mid-century charm – tile is one of the first things I check to assess what year that remodel went down!
12×12 beige blocks on the floor means the early 90’s. Hand painted “tuscan” tile on the back splash – especially with a little framed element over the range – means late 90’s. Blue tinted glass tile tells me it’s early 2000s and subway tile with black grout says it just got flipped in the farmhouse era!
So, yes! Choose a tile you love. But also beware of trendy choices that will time stamp your remodel!
TABLE OF CONTENTS
How not to pick tile
My friend, you’re going to be tempted – SO tempted – to just fall or DIVE down an internet rabbit hole, hunting the perfect backsplash tile for your kitchen as a proxy for a solid master plan on the whole project.
I get it. Tile is so pretty. Looking at options is soothing.
You’ll make a list of “great” mid-century tile companies. You’ll compare cost per square foot, reach for your calculator app and wince a lot. You’ll make pin boards and send links to your partner or friends.
And, look, none of this is WRONG, per se. But it’s not really helping.
It’s not the easy way (the time you’ll spend spinning out is uncountable!!)
And it’s not the cheap way. When you fall in love with fireclay you’ve locked yourself into something that will affect the bottom line. Again, not wrong but …
Ultimately you may choose to spend on a tile that makes you squee in joy. But I want you to know what your options are first!!
Where to actually start in your tile search
BEFORE you start the tile search, you’re better off getting a handle on how tile will fit into your overall style guide – how it will work with the other finish materials you are choosing to create a cohesive whole.
If you haven’t done it yet, take 3 minutes and try out my mid-century style quiz. Knowing if you are aiming time-capsule vintage or modern mid-century update is very connected to your tile choices!!
A few easy suggestions based on your style quiz:
If you love a time capsule, you’ll love a bath full of color block 4×4 inch tile in your favorite color and coordinating with your plumbing fixtures if possible.
If you’re a mid mod fusion person you might like to mix it up with a brick or subway tile shape but a clean stack bond pattern. Lay your tile horizontally for a clean and timeless style!
If you score Modern mid-century, the turn your tile 90 degrees and let it stack up vertically. This still plays well with the rest of a mid-century house but feels updated and playful!!
MCM tile rules of thumb
One way or another, if you want your tile to feel timelessly connect to the home’s mid-century roots, here are a few tips to keep in mind.
Stack it (don’t stagger it)
This more than maybe anything else!! The tile in a mid-century house is arranged in a grid pattern. There are a few exceptions to every rule, for example, I’ve seen the occasional mcm color block bathroom where the 4×4 tile is installed with each row offset from the one before but those are rare.
If your goal is for newly installed tile to read as mid-century, have your installer STACK it! You can choose squares, or even a “subway tile” format but install it in a stack bond pattern.
Oh but watch out for this … which is even worse than a straight flipper’s subway tile special. This person and I could say the same thing to our therapists:
Keep the grout light
In the early MCM years, white grout is what they had. So, particularly if you are going for a time capsule effect you want to choose a white grout and a 4×4 color block tile. Even if you are updating rather than back dating you still want your grout to be no darker than the tile itself. A white tile black grout is going to look like a flipper special. (Also, to me, it looks like black mold. Yikes)
No clear tile and avoid too much shine.
There was a trend for “clear” or “glass” tile a while ago … maybe 20teens? That tile all still exists. And sometimes it pops across your consciousness and feels fun, light and bright. Resist it. MCM tile is opaque and probably has a matte finish.
These rules of thumb are just that. Not laws. Not “set in stone. ” But your tile will be set in grout which means that when its’ removed it goes right to the landfill without passing go or collecting 200 dollars. So my advice on tile is that – as long as you don’t feel too strongly about it – lean mcm original or into a relativly neutral choice. That makes it less likely to be torn out by you or someone else in a few years or even a few decades. It has the durabiltiy to last as long as any material in your house … as long as people continue to like it.
As with any element of your mid mod remodel, feel free to make a more modern choice but just know what you’re doing and why!
Need help thinking about tile or other finish choices for your home? The best place to begin your style guide process is this easy, fun workshop! Or reach out directly to me and Mid Mod Midwest for some planning assistance! I’d love to chat about tile choices with you!
In Today’s Episode You’ll Hear:
- How to read a tile you see out in the wild.
- Why to start from your style guide.
- Where to use different types of tile.
Listen Now On
Quick design tip for…mid-century bathrooms
Mid Mod House Feature of the Week
The built in porcelain soap dish, et al.
Resources
- Get ready to remodel with my free Masterclass, “How to Plan an MCM Remodel to Fit Your Life(…and Budget)” available on demand!
- Get the essential elements of my master plan process in my new mini-course, Master Plan in a Month.
- Want us to master plan for you? Find out all the details with my mini-class, Three Secrets of a Regret-Proof Mid Mod Remodel.
And you can always…
- Join us in the Facebook Community for Mid Mod Remodel
- Find me on Instagram:@midmodmidwest
- Find the podcast on Instagram: @midmodremodelpodcast
Read the Full Episode Transcript
Let’s talk about tile for a mid-century update. You’ve got options. You can go with bold custom color in your favorite shade or recreate a bathroom in powder blue or Mamie pink. Check out my friends at make it mid-century. For that last one, you can get playful with shapes and even textures, but tile choice also runs the risk of tipping into a trend that will ultimately put a timestamp on your whole remodel.
So your decisions about tile for a mid-century update do need to connect back to the mid-century years in a few key respects. Today, let’s do a little tile tutorial, and I will talk you through how to read a tile you see out in the wild, how to start from your style guide, types of tile and where to put it, what not to do, and I even name check a few brands. Hey there.
Welcome back to mid mod remodel. This is a show about updating MCM homes, helping you match a mid-century home to your modern life. I’m your host. Della Hansmann, architect and mid-century ranch enthusiast. You’re listening to Episode 2103 for today’s design tip of the week, let’s talk about a bath update. And for a great bath update, you’re going to need perfect mid mod finishes. There is, of course, a wide range of possibilities to finish a mid-century bathroom.
You could go with a perfect time capsule and color matching the Thailand tub, or plan a clean, lined modern update that still fits under the category mid-century, as opposed to cottage, farmhouse, industrial or rustic, but is certainly more contemporary. There’s such a wide range of possibilities just in tile that we’re going to talk about that for most of the rest of the episode. But don’t forget the built ins, the plumbing and light fixtures, paint or wallpaper on parts of the wall that are not tired, tiled and more.
So you want to start, of course, by knowing your mid-century style and for help with this, if you have not taken it before. Hi, we’re just meeting right now. Take the mid-century style quiz. Head over to mid mod midwest.com/quiz and it will take you three minutes to get your answer one of three broad categories of mid-century style, more vintage, more fusion or more contemporary modern. You can narrow down your preference even more, but having a bucket to put your mid-century style into is going to help you focus your preference to preserve or update or start pulling together the right combination of inspirations.
My advice on bathrooms is to lean into color where you love it and play it safe where you don’t. So if you want to go all in on a pink themed bathroom, that’s my hot take, yes, if you love it, but also feel free to choose something understated for the permanent elements and bring more boldness into the easy to change places like paint on the walls or even fabric, elements like tiles and floor mats.
Check your instincts on how comfortable you personally are with a bold, permanent choice. And if you know that your taste in color tends to change every five to 10 years, maybe go with something that has felt neutral to you in the past, so you can make changes as you feel the vibe without having to tear out the whole bathroom and start again when you’re stuck on what to do in the bathroom, if you have already done the kitchen, you can follow that style guide.
Or if you are going to preserve other parts of your mid-century house, lean into that if you have locked in on a warm, honey toned wood in kitchen cabinets already, or even if you plan to, but the kitchen remodel is coming later. Do the same in the bathroom, or if you’ve got your original kitchen woodwork intact, absolutely try to match that. The same goes for all the other finish choices, the metal color, the finish you choose, matte or shiny for your faucets, handles, light fixtures and more.
But remember, it doesn’t have to match. If you want to mix it up here you can. You don’t have to make the same choices for every bath in the house. Your goal is just to have each individual room feel very thematically connected and the whole house feel loosely so.
So my best advice is to set your style guide for the whole house before you make a single choice as always, but certainly set a style guide for this bathroom before you dive in. In order to set yourself up for your perfect mid-century finishes, check out the mid-century style guide clinic, which I updated last year to more than a mood board clinic. For a thorough overview of this, ask yourself, am I listening to the style cues set by my house that I like? Am I making good choices in my bath that will play well with the rest of the house? And as a follow up, am I avoiding current trends that are going to date this bathroom back to the mid 2020s?
Later, feel confident about each of those questions, and you’re going in the right direction for five more tips on a great mid-century bath update. Get them in the free guide you can grab from mid mod midwest.com/bath but I will also say if you were thinking about remodeling a small bathroom, or if you’re worried about choosing finishes and fixtures for any room in your house, then I have one of two amazing, amazing two hour recorded mid-century design workshops to recommend to you. And I recently knocked the price on all of these workshops down to $39 so they are a literal steal they are such a good investment of your time and a little bit of mid-century Master Plan Guidance to take you through so many pitfalls, mistakes, question marks, opportunities to go off in a side tangent and just waste your own time.
Follow the steps I lay out in the mid-century design clinic focused on bathrooms and essentially stroll through the steps of the master plan process applied to that room from the initial feeling of I think we need to redo that bathroom. Darn that might be because companies coming. That might be because we’ve had a major plumbing disaster. That might be because the shape and size of your family is changing.
Whatever your impetus is, this is going to walk you through the most straightforward and thorough path through the woods of planning a remodel for a bathroom that you could possibly imagine. So check that out in the link in the show notes, you won’t regret it. Likewise, if you’re working to plan any individual room or a bigger remodel, you can’t do better to plan a cohesive look for your style by taking my more than a mood board clinic.
Again, in just two hours, I’m going to walk you through the simple style guide process, which is everything that I use myself for my clients, and everything that I teach inside of ready to remodel boiled down into a two hour clinic with examples, a 20 some page Google Doc and just a full download of the process that you want to follow to get a great mid-century result.
It would be nuts of me, not to mention that in conjunction with the episode on tile, because really, tile is so deeply connected, backwards and forwards into your general style guide, thinking about your whole style guide, your house style as a whole, in order to choose tile and letting the choice of your tile, if that’s the direction you’re going in, then influence the other choices around it are, I wouldn’t even say they’re no brainers.
They’re mandatory for a good remodel that you will like the outcome of, and that won’t drive you nuts along the entire planning process. There you go. All right, you can find that bath guide at mid mod midwest.com/bath and find all the clinic options that I just mentioned by going to mid mod midwest.com generally and then using the learn with us tab to go to Design clinics, or we’ll put links in the show notes. Make it easy.
Let’s get back to our main topic of today, tile. Oh, by the way, the show notes for today will be at mid mod, midwest.com/ 2103 There you go. Okay, tile for a mid-century update. Let’s get into it. I’ve been recently reposting, and I’m going to do some more, some of my favorite tile sources, places that you might go to look for, tile that is likely to be appropriate for mid-century house and that you can certainly drool over fall in love with notice other examples of mid-century homeowners who’ve made great choices that you would like to be inspired by.
I actually shouted out most of the companies that I have and will be mentioning on Instagram in a post from several years ago How to Choose the Right mid-century tile for your remodel. That was episode 801 from February 3, 2022, so if you want to go check that out, please do in that episode, I was talking specifically about how to choose a particular tile, and today I want to do a bit more of a tile tutorial, talking about practice, theory and choice of tile for a mid-century
Update, because there’s more to a successful tile result in your home than just the product itself or the company that’s sourcing it to you, as with anything in a mid-century update, you want to start from your style quiz. You can go in any direction you want, but I want you to be careful. I want you to be aware that tile is one of the most definite markers of a decade.
When I’m walking through a remodeled mid-century home, something that has a remodel that obviously stands out and has become dated, the first thing I’m looking for are color choices in the paint, the stain and grain of the wood, and the type shape of tile, and tile is going to tell me things like a subway tile means it was done in the last 15 years. If there is anything remotely Tuscan, anything a crew, anything with a little bit of a floral painted pattern on a tile in the kitchen, we are talking 90s, early, 2000s if it’s brown or beige rather than I crew. I’m probably going to assume, or particularly if it has that kind of like darkened edge around a square tile, I’m going to say 1980s something a little too bold in color or pattern is going to say 1970s.
I want to begin and end this episode by telling you to choose tile that you love, that speaks to you, that makes your heart sing, that you’re going to smile at and want to touch all day long once your remodel is over. But do it mindfully. So start from your style quiz, and figure out where you are, as I mentioned in the in the bath clue, vintage, fusion, modern. And maybe go further with that, because there’s a lot more shades of definition to your style identity than just three options. But from there, you’ll take yourself to your style guide.
Now, even if you love window shopping, even if you’re gonna say, okay, Della, you give me your list of vendors you like, and I went to all of them, and I picked my favorite tile. That’s fine. You may pick a tile and build your entire style guide around it. You may pick a tile and build your entire budget around it.
But there is a better way to think about tile specifically, but a lot of other elements in your home, and that is to begin with a style guide approach to highlight this, I’m actually going to go back and pick on or highlight an example of someone who came to a recent free clinic one of my mid-century planning a mid-century remodel to fit your life and budget live events. And she had asked if I could help her identify a vaguely 1970s looking tile that was in the basement of her, I think, federal government office, workplace. She walks by it all the time. It makes her really happy, and she’d love to find it and source it for her bathroom. She sent it a picture, and this is great.
We often see things in the wild. We often see things in a magazine. We often see things at someone’s home and think, Oh, my God, that’s beautiful. I want that. And the temptation is always find the person who purchased that object and ask them for the product information. But there is another approach to this, which is simply to study it from a style guide perspective and say, what is it about this object? In this case, this tile that makes you sing. And so she wasn’t available on the call. I was answering the question asynchronously, but I could tell looking at this, it was really cool, in the kind of subtle way that people who love mid-century, people with a certain vein of Mid-century Modern Love, will fall in love with things like a 1980s mural in a highway underpass, or, like I was last week photographing the terrazzo in the floor of airport bathrooms, because I think it’s beautiful.
So this is beautiful in that kind of way. I mean this in the best way, but it was had a couple of notable features. It was in a subtle, sort of a light beige color, so in a flipper update, that tile would be white, shiny, bright white, and it would have a shiny finish. But in fact, it was not a matte brown, not a matte a crew, but somewhere in between, and it had a very subtle contrast between the tile and the grout. In a true mid-century version, it probably would have had a white grout again, in your HGTV flipper update, it would have black grout in tween to make a starker contrast.
But here was very neutral, so that’s something you can pay attention to. It was arranged in a stack bond pattern like grid, which is what you should do in any case. But again, this is adding up to the effect that you like. And they were oriented in a vertical alignment. So even though they were shaped like subway tiles in an elongated rectangle, they didn’t lay on their sides like bricks. They stood up like little soldiers. So all of these things you can pay attention to, when
I zoomed in a little closer on the image, I could see that they had a bit of variability to the finish of the tile itself. It wasn’t one consistent flat color. It looked like a hand crafted tile, maybe like a fire clay tile, a clay house tile. Those are brands you might look into. But when you think about all those qualities, you could look for something that’s similar to that tile without being able to if that’s an original 1970s tile.
Good luck to you finding it again. But even if you were trying to track down the specific tile that you saw in a mid-century house tour that a famous Hollywood actor did in their Vogue spread, at some point, you might not be able to find the exact source for their tile. It was probably handcrafted by child monks in an artisan workshop in Tuscany, you aren’t going to get your hands on that, nor could you even if it were available, because it won’t be affordable. But you can still find something that has the same pattern, the same repetition, the same contrast between grout, the same matte to shiny finish, the same stain, sort of variability in color versus consistent paint, swath color. So all of those things add up.
This is a micro approach to the style guide. You’re listing the qualities of the thing rather than asking for the thing itself. If this feels like a big digression, I’m sorry, but I just want you to feel empowered to. So look for objects to replace irreplaceable objects, and to look up and down the budget range. Rather than as much as I love fire clay, as much as I love Heath, as much as I love any of the real sort of buzzword tile companies, and I recommend them fully. If that’s what you’re looking for, you might be able to find something similar from another supplier that works as well, or could be made to work as well, or maybe you can’t.
And even that search itself will let you know that it’s worth the price point to you because you couldn’t replace it through a style guide search. All right, let’s talk about a couple of categories of tile, types of tile. My favorite in the mid-century context is always going to be, I think I’m obligated to make it be a simple field color in four by four tile, and in the mid-century era that has a couple of specific qualities. It’s not a harsh edged tile. It’s got a slightly rounded corner, so the grout is set slightly back in plane from the tile itself.
The grout in this color field color kind of field color tile is almost always going to be white. It’s not going to match the tile, and it’s not going to be much darker than the tile. When it’s clean, it’ll be white. And it’s just, it’s such a fun opportunity to just make a wall of bold color, if you love a pink or a blue or a lean in bathroom color of any style, a simple field of four by four inch tile squares is going to be your go to but there are a bunch of other options.
If you are into accent shapes and patterns, sort of jazzy patterns. There are a bunch of modern, mid-century style manufacturers that are making things right up your alley. So you’re going to want to go look at things like mercury mosaics, Clay house, Heath ceramics. Even these are often going to read a little bit more late mid-century, a little more late 50s, early 60s, verging into the 70s, they come sometimes in bold or brighter colors, and they will be in a hexagon shape, in a tessellated shape, set on a diagonal with a stamped pattern in them.
They’re going to have just an element of play in them that is totally fine and fun and absolutely something to go for, going another step further, sometimes you’re also going to find three dimensional shapes in tiles, and this can be a really fun way to get a monochromatic look that still has a lot of movement and play in it. And for this, I would point you towards clay house. Again, that’s a h-a-u-s by the way, all one word, or for the original I pointed a client towards Heath ceramics for a fun, patterned, three dimensional tile that actually they have been making and manufacturing and producing since the mid-century. It’s often used on Commercial front pieces but works gorgeous for something like a fireplace replacement surround and the quality just can’t be matched. So this is a way, if you want to have something that’s not as if you feel like a four by four original color block bathroom is kind of boring. You can do something that’s color blocked but still has more pattern and shape, and that can be really fun.
All right, that leads me to brick like tile, and this comes in handy. I’ll talk in a minute about when people need to use tile to replace or to create the function of brick. And this can be really fun. In this case, you’re looking for something without a shiny, shiny finish, and possibly in a brick shape or format with a little bit more texture, a little bit more of a potholed or cratered surface that can do a really good job of actually looking like fake brick or serving the textural purpose of brick.
And then, of course, I have to mention tile that looks like other things. Here’s where I’m making a frowny face. I’m not a big fan of tile that looks like wood. This is mainly what it’s for. People have really gotten into the wood. Look floor, quote, unquote, made out of porcelain tile. And to be perfectly honest, it drives me nuts. I mean as an architect, and certainly as a mid-century a modernist architect, I have to object to anything that is a fake material that looks like other things, even though I do love linoleum that fake looks like brick or tile, or any number of other interesting surfaces.
But yeah, what does not look like wood is ceramic, and what does not look like a wood floor is ceramic set into the floor in a pattern that is six inches wide and three feet long, set like subway tile. So if anyone’s trying to talk you into doing this, just say thank you and walk away politely from them. Hopefully you already know that. So. And then one more type of tile that sort of squeaks in under the category, I would say, is terrazzo that comes in tile format now one the original point of terrazzo, again, things that look like other things.
This, for me, works. Terrazzo is a material that comes basically when you pour out aggregate and little pebbles all over a floor and then grind them flat, exposing the little pebble form. But you can absolutely have terrazzo sourced off site and sent to you in large format, tile that you then put together with very, very narrow grout lines, and that will do the trick. It will be similar in quality to a tile floor, but have less gaps, less texture under your foot and be very nicely, cleanable and waterproof and beautiful. So if that’s your interest, knock yourself out.
So as we talk about places types of tile for a mid-century update, let’s talk about places you could put tile for a mid-century update. The obvious ones, as we started from the bathroom, are on the walls and floor of a bathroom. And I’m going to talk in a moment. I’m going to focus on Time Capsule bathrooms in a modern bath remodel, you certainly can have one uniform tile that wraps from the floor up onto the walls.
Sometimes that’s even an interesting effect. I have seen people play with a design where the floor tile will wrap up onto one wall and then have another contrasting tile on the other sides. People will often do this in a shower as well that I am not as much of a fan of, although I can’t say it’s a bad idea in every instance, but floor and tiles in a bathroom wet spaces, similarly, in the floor of a kitchen, in the floor of an entry or a mud room, also you can put tile out on a stoop.
If you are dealing with original concrete that has taken a beating, you may have to dig it out and replace it, or you might with consultation from a good installer, be able to cover it over with an outdoor grade tile, probably I would recommend you go with something relatively subtle, like a terra cotta pattern. I mentioned outdoor grade for two reasons, one, because you don’t want to install tile and then have it crack in the first freeze thaw cycle. And two, because it needs to have a little bit of texture to it, or it could be quite dangerous to walk upon when wet.
Beware of that. Check the walk on it when wet rating, which should be given for any outdoor based tile, and then in the kitchen there’s the backsplash area. I actually don’t really think of tile needing to go floor to high tide line anywhere in a kitchen, although I’m told this is coming back on trend again, again. Beware of trends. And certainly in the 80s or early 90s, there was sort of a tile the whole wall moment going on. But generally you’re only going to need tile in the backsplash areas of a kitchen, up behind any wall, counter surfaces. Could be a good idea.
How high it goes is an open question. It might terminate at the bottom of upper cabinets or a shelf or simply just stop at some point in the middle of the wall, an area that feels graceful. This can be a really tricky one, and I recommend many mockups before you decide on the perfect height for your black backsplash to terminate. One more place that tile often goes, as I mentioned before, is around a fireplace that has lost its original finish, or never really had any. I have helped several clients design this when the original fireplace had basically no surround whatsoever, and we wanted to make a big dramatic as if it had had a cool mod brick surround going floor to ceiling, perhaps asymmetrically, rather than going in.
In the first instance, I’m thinking of they had a very specific brick already happening in the house on the exterior, and I think in the basement. And we didn’t want to introduce another different brick. So instead, we chose to make a brick look with a dark, highly textured brick proportioned tile, and we even furred the wall out by the width of one brick thickness, so that we could miter the corners and have that brick wrap back so it really had the appearance.
Again, a little bit making a fake thing, but I think enough of the referent of the original quality. We did a stack bond pattern. We allowed it to sort of go side to side in an asymmetrical way so that the fireplace was framed interestingly, and kind of shifted it towards the part of the wall that we wanted without moving it at all. And the result was quite lovely, subtle and dramatic. The same time. I’ve also helped people to set this up when they have found that the original bricks around of a fireplace has been hopelessly painted over to the point that it cannot be unpainted. That’s most paint on brick can’t be taken off.
And they really, really wanted to get away from that layered, thick sort of I. Plaster feeling of paint on brick. So we went with, in their case, a really interesting textured tile. I think we looked at a heath and, in fact, we ended up sourcing from a modern supplier, but a beautiful, repeating pattern that had a nice three dimensional quality that could be arranged again in a stack bond. If you have not caught it yet, stack bond is the name of the name of the game when we’re doing mid-century tile.
And the result really quite lovely. I’ll throw a couple of examples these onto the show notes page, so be sure to go over there and check them out. I think you’ll find the renderings very appealing. All right, let’s lean into the time capsule of it all when you’re choosing tile for a mid-century update. And then finally, I’m going to wrap up with some rules of thought. With some rules of thumb. But if you’re thinking about a true vintage bathroom, a time capsule bathroom, you’re going to have four by four color block tile on the wall. It might have some fun added details.
Sometimes it’s going to have a contrasting color surround, or a little border wrapping around that the top right under the sort of high tide line. Sometimes the floor, bottom, sort of bottom edge of the floor, is going to have a little bull nose curve, wrapping into the floor. Sometimes it’s going to be a contrasting material to the field tile, so that it starts to blend into the floor material. But it’s always going to be a solid four by four stack bond tile with white grout. That’s pretty much the rule on the floors.
There’s more variability. Sometimes it’s the same four by four set of diagonal. I don’t know why they choose a diagonal. It always drives me nuts when they do that, but they sometimes did. More likely it’s to be a small pattern made of one by one squares, sometimes white squares with a few different colors, a few different versions of the field, color thrown in, like a light blue, a mid-blue and a dark blue for a blue bathroom.
Earlier in the later 40s and early 50s, you’ll see more repeating geometric patterns. So like a large square made up of smaller squares, or even a plaid, kind of a pattern made up of smaller squares. Later in the 50s, the trend for the smaller tile and bathroom floors shifted in popularity to more of a field pattern, the kind of thing your eye scatters across rather than resolving it into larger shapes.
And one classic version of that is a set of one by one, two by two and one by two rectangles that kind of Tetris together into a repeating pattern that is a little hard to figure out where it starts and ends. And if you’re me, you probably lost time in your grandparents’ bathroom trying to figure out exactly where the repeats happened back before there were smartphones to keep everyone entertained all the time.
Also perfectly manage appropriate in areas where terrazzo was a major default material throughout the house, so California, Florida, other places in the south, it would absolutely be the bathroom flooring as well. And you can do that now. Same for concrete actually, by the way, it is absolutely mid-century appropriate, although not my favorite, in a time capsule bathroom, to find that linoleum was originally used on the floor in the kitchen and the bathroom. This is true in many mid-century modest homes.
It’s true in my home and that I did not feel that I needed to be authentic and replicate. I replaced that bathroom and, well, I haven’t gotten to the kitchen material yet, but I replaced that material in the bathroom. So Oh, one more place you’ll find tile in a time capsule bathroom is possibly on the counter, again, sometimes in a diamond pattern, no. And in general, I don’t recommend it.
Cleaning the grout on a horizontal surface that regularly holds water is just not a pleasant task. So this is, again, another mid-century idea we don’t have to repeat if we don’t want to, go with that way you will. Let’s wrap up with some rules of thumb, some design tricks for tile for a mid-century bathroom. You don’t have to follow these. Feel free to make more modern choices. But when you do know what you’re doing and why to replicate a mid-century Look, you’re always going to choose a light grout.
White grout was what they used, and so it’s just, yeah, you can go with a matching grout if you want to, but I often feel like it’s more trouble than it’s worth. Don’t go with a dark grout for a light tile. It’s going to look like a flipper’s subway tile kitchen, and it’s not going to look good that and in fact, is just a weird affectation that was never appropriate. The cottage style that the subway tile kitchens are trying to emulate always would have had white tile, white grout too.
Frankly, to me, dark grout always just looks like it has gotten a terrible fungal problem. That’s a personal feeling, but it is a truth of mid-century tile that Della using white grout, you’re also going to always, always, always use a stack bond pattern for any rectangular tile. That means it’s in a grid and all the corners line up with each other. Caveat, make sure you’re in style. Tile installer makes all the corners line up with each other. Nothing is actually. Worse than if they get misaligned one row to another, and yeah, oh my gosh, it will. It will keep you up at night if that happens, but it’s easy to avoid with the proper blocking any kind of an offset.
Okay, there is an exception. I have seen vintage Time Capsule bathrooms with four by four tile, and the four by four tile is set in a half offset pattern, so each horizontal row is moved one half tile width over from the one below and above it. But don’t do that. It’s not a good idea. It doesn’t look great. It doesn’t flatter the tile. Let it be a grid. What does the brick want to be? It wants to carry a load.
And what does the tile want to be in a mid-century house. It wants to be stacked. Do lean into the color block if it makes you happy, and lead into bold colors if you want to most mid-century tile came in a color, and it’s part of the charm, but it also is part of what drove people to rip it out and remodel it, because they had a personal aversion to that particular color, not that the tile was poorly installed or that it was failing, although those things do happen and do cause bathroom remodels. But I hate to see someone rip out a whole bathroom because they don’t like the color.
Feel free to do your bathroom, and as I said at the top, any color that pleases you, and then the next person will do what they may. They might choose the house because they love your taste in tile. And if they don’t, that’s up to them. But if you yourself are the kind of person whose taste in tile is going to change from year to year, then I recommend you choose something a little more neutral and put your bold colors onto paint on the walls, onto soft furnishing in somewhere other than something that is grouted to the house, and when it’s taken off, we’ll have to go straight into the landfill.
What else? I think you’ve got a couple of options for the material of your tile. Most mid-century tile would have had a matte finish, but you can go shiny or shiny if you want to. One thing I will ask you to avoid, or recommend that you avoid, is glass tile, particularly the type that you can see through one of the tile companies, I recommend mod walls. That makes a lovely one by one pattern. That’s kind of my go to for vintage bathroom floors. They make a glass tile, but it’s not that blue tinted early 2000s classic trend choice. It just looks like tile. It’s just constructed from glass. It’s not clear. So what it’s made of does matter, but what it looks like matters more. You’re looking for an opaque tile.
Yet again, all of these are simply rules of thumb for tile for a mid-century update, you don’t have to follow them. I just want you to make sure that when you deviate from them, you’re doing it because it’s something you adore that will make you happy from start to finish, and not because it’s something you saw in a magazine that seemed on trend, or that your neighbor did it or the contractor recommended it as easier. One way or another, the tile choices are going to have a huge impact on the way you feel about your house.
So have some fun with them. Do allow yourself to fall in love with a tile. Do allow yourself to splurge for a tile you love, and if you need to limit the area that it’s taking place in, that’s a great compromise, because tile can be expensive for square foot. So let’s make every single square foot count, and don’t put it in places that it does not need to be. If you’ve got questions or comments about mid-century tile, I’d love to hear them reach out and chat me up on Instagram about the tile you love, the tile you lost, the tile you dream of the tile you will put in your remodel.
The tile for a mid-century remodel is such a personal, magical choice, and I’d love to hear about what you’ve got in mind for yours. I thought I would tie our mid mod design feature of the week in with the episode. There’s never gonna be a better time to talk about the built in porcelain mid-century soap dish, or its siblings, the cup holder, the toothbrush holder. Sometimes these were made out of the same tile as the color themed tile in a color bathroom.
I would also classify the metal in Unit pieces that you could put in the disappearing, rotating piece that could hide the soap or hide the cup. They sometimes went as a set with the toilet paper holder, bar, bath towels, things like that. And these days, I think all that’s really left of the actual ceramic mashing version is the one that still shows up in the tile surround of a shower or a tub, and I think that’s I think it’s a shame, because they really were so fun. In other cases, in mid-century vintage bathrooms, you’ll see that the whole bathroom is done in a color block tile, and the soap dishes and the cup and toothbrush holders by the sink are in white, because presumably.
Yeah, well, I don’t know. I always assume that that’s done because the color theme wasn’t available. Since the mid-century, moderns were leaning so hard into those color themes, but potentially they thought it was an interesting contrast. I’m curious what you think. Is it fun? Is a built in soap dish or a built in water glass holder or toothbrush holder. Is this a boon? Is it a feature? Is it fun?
Or are they fussy and don’t fit modern things and are hard to clean, and you wish you could get rid of them? Would you put them in if you were re tiling a mid-century bathroom? They definitely tie in with my theory that it’s always better to make places to get things up off the bathroom counters. I will often run a shallow shelf across the back, sort of in the back splash area of a vanity that you can put your handiest. You know the danger is that it get cluttered. But you could put your glass of water, your handiest couple of lotion and cleanser bottles, your most necessary hand soap, toothpaste, deodorant. It depends on what you want to see, what can be hiding in plain sight and what needs to be tucked away.
But one way or another, I think having some of that stuff handy in sight, but not on the counter surface, is such a benefit. And at least in my whole household, anything that gets set on the counter instantly attracts clutter. I just cannot resist grouping a pill bottle that I just got out and a ponytail holder and a Chapstick and a nail clippers in a snug little area, but I put them together next to anything that is sitting on the counter so any individual toothpaste or lotion bottle or hand soap that sits on the counter is just an attractive nuisance in my bathroom.
Maybe I’m extrapolating onto my clients too much, but I do think that there’s kind of a magic to those old fashioned soap holders, and I love the way that they color coordinated with the vintage tile. The modern equivalent of this is probably the little built in niche that we put into the tile setups of a lot of modern showers, a cavity inset that you can put into the wall thickness that allows you to set a number of handy bottles and other shower needs out of sight lightly, not on the surface of the tub, not on the floor, If there is no tub.
And that is very convenient. I don’t dislike it. Oh, one caveat to that is, if you’re planning to do that, make sure you accurately measure the height of the potion bottles that you’re planning to put there, and then also make sure your contractor is helping you account for the added space that the thickness of the tile and the framing itself will take.
So leave yourself a little wiggle room, is what I’m saying. Or you may find yourself setting your favorite bottle on the floor anyway. I don’t know, though, I always find those little cut in niches to be fine, adequate, not a bad idea, but a little less full of character than the built in shaped soap dish, which obviously doesn’t hold as much or serve as many purposes, but they’re fun.
One thing I would not recommend doing, by the way, is highlighting the inside or framing around those inset niches with a bunch of contrasting color tile or a little framing device. So many people tend to find that a place where they could put if they’re torn between two kinds of tile, or if they want to do a relatively neutral field tile, they’ll frame around the niche with a contrasting, maybe a bold or color, and it just ends up highlighting all your shampoo bottles the follow the mid-century.
Here’s where I say the mid-century moderns got it right. That soap ditch, whether you like it or not, should match the tile that’s around it. My two cents, one more opinion thrown in at the end of the episode for you. So I would love to know your thoughts. Do you use the mid-century soap dish if you’ve got it, or do you actually not keep soap there?
I will admit I have one in the blue tile in my shower surround is the last bit of original tile in the house, or the only bit, I guess, this is a very linoleum rather than tile kind of a house, as we discussed earlier in the episode. But I don’t actually keep anything in that soap dish, because I use liquid soap rather than bar soap. So it’s not it’s not soothing. Its purpose at all. But I do like to look at it anyway.
What do you think? Did you grow up around these? Do you always use them in your household? Do you find them charming? Did they just get mineral water scale on them and drive you nuts? What’s your take on the mid-century inbuilt soap dish? I’ll have some pictures of a favorite option or two tucked into the show notes page.
So go check them out there. One last thing I didn’t mention is that it’s great if you can preserve any tile you like, but don’t keep things mindlessly. If damaged tile has happened, then you’re probably going to need to get into replacement and repair, and if you’re changing the layout, or frankly, even some of the plumbing fixtures in your bathroom, you may need to prepare yourself for a loss of original tile.
So as you think about the tile. Mail for a mid-century update to replace what you’ve lost. Remember that you can always lean back into what you had, or this is your opportunity, if you liked the vintage style, but you did not like that particular mid-century color, to recreate a color block bathroom in your favorite color one way or another, considering the patterns and a few rules of thumb, like layout, grout, color and even spacing, matte or shiny is this is going to help you make choices for your mid-century house that will last and that you will love.
Those two things are basically the bottom line. There are visual examples to go with this episode. So do check out the show notes page at mid mod midwest.com/ 2103 and keep an eye on my Instagram.
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be shouting out some of my favorite mid-century tile suppliers again, and that’s always a great place to see some examples and get excited about other people’s good ideas in mid-century homes. Best of luck in choosing the right tile for your mid-century update.