How High to Tile a Bath
I’m at the point in our renovation where I’ve become brain dead, apathetic, and indecisive. We planned to tile the bathroom only halfway up the wall. We’ll paint the rest. The contractor is asking where exactly I want the tile to stop. What’s typically done? What was done in an old brownstone? Is the standard…
I’m at the point in our renovation where I’ve become brain dead, apathetic, and indecisive. We planned to tile the bathroom only halfway up the wall. We’ll paint the rest. The contractor is asking where exactly I want the tile to stop. What’s typically done? What was done in an old brownstone? Is the standard higher or lower than that nowadays? Can anyone run into their bathroom with a measuring tape and see how high off the floor their’s goes. Ridiculous, I know, but that’s what it’s come to. I’d appreciate any direction.
I have two original prewar bathrooms, one with an original tub with shower, and the other with a clawfoot tub that wasn’t originally a shower. The room with the shower tub has tile to the ceiling around the shower and just below the medicine cabinet on the rest of the room. The clawfoot tub room has tile just to the base of the medicine cabinet.
When we tile a bathroom we go above the height of wall switches, so field tile would get receptacle, plus cap if any above.
It all depends on the size tile you have selected. We recently did a few baths with 12″ tiles, so 4 tiles high is OK, with Schluter trim cap.
Our feelings have always been, what height is someone’s palm when they lean against the wall. So between 48-60″.
Don’t forget you don’t have as much flexiblity as you think if you have a tub. The lowest point on the tub surface determines the grout line for the whole bath room. So you will have to tile down from there on the walls. Don’t make the beginner’s mistake of measuring up from the floor, cause you will probably have a cut tile going down to the floor. With a zillion small tiles it doesn’t make much difference, but with larger tiles/stone, the location of grout lines makes a big difference.
For the difference in price, we go all the way up to ceiling in baths and showers. If a painted surface is going to look grungy in a few years because of moisture, you don’t want to have to paint the whole bath room to make it look all right.
For that matter I recommend tiling the shower ceiling, it’s tough but once it’s done it’s done.
As long I’ve already climbed up onto the soapbox, we only consider epoxy grout in the shower/bath and bath floor. I’ll transition to plain grout on the walls outside the shower, especially if there is some sort of transition, that can hide the grout difference (shower doors?).
Epoxy is a definite pain, but (I seem to have said this before) once it’s done it’s done.
bruce at jerseydata.net
Not a house, but similar era apartment with very old bath. 47″. Seems about right. You wouldn’t want more than a few inches lower, and hardly much higher, unless you want the tile to be shoulder height.
Partly depends on other elements in the room. Depends on what you are doing with wall above and below that. 47″ is nice because it at least covers any splashs on the wall above the sink. Is not a bad idea to cover just about up to the bottom of the medicine cabinet, if one is above the sink. Also, you probably don’t want to go as high as any other storage units higher on the wall.
Mine has two towel rails on one wall (the kind with ceramic ends) in the tiles, with towel bars at 44″. My tiles go to the bottom of the window sill, and about 3″ higher, so the tile kind of hugs the window.
Yes, go higher than you think you’ll need in the shower – water splashes up. You don’t have to go all the way to the ceiling (mine would look stupid as my ceilings are so high), but go quite high – into the 80s of inches at least.
Ours is tiled to 4 feet. One bath only has the tile on the walls with the sink and toilet and just one row of tiles (so 6″) around the floor. I prefer the look where it’s tiled to 4 feet on both sides of the room.
Mine is tiled all the way around to 8″ above sink level. That also gets you just above the top of the toilet tank. Obviously the shower stall is tiled about 8″ above the showerhead.
More true to style – look inside NYPL digital archives for ideas…
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=304050&imageID=487323&parent_id=304039&word=&snum=&s=¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&total=262&num=0&imgs=20&pNum=&pos=4
http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchdetail.cfm?trg=1&strucID=298890&imageID=486722&total=36&num=0&word=%20bathroom&s=1¬word=&d=&c=&f=&k=0&lWord=&lField=&sScope=&sLevel=&sLabel=&imgs=20&pos=11&e=w
Going by the style in 20s era bathrooms, I tiled to the top around the bath tub, and went 6″ higher than the sink everywhere else. No tile on the wall opposite the sink.
LOL, love your post.
Re height of tile, depends on era. Just FYI in the teens the tile came up to about shoulder height, but then typically later in the century, people with this style of tile often added additional tile all the way up the walls on all sides in the shower or bathtub area. This is a good idea, because otherwise you’ll splash water on the walls and create water damage.
We have small 1890s bathrooms with no tile, just wood wainscotting and wood floors. We have clawfoot tubs. We use either a special long and tall shower curtain or we overlap three regular curtains together so the water never, ever, ever gets outside the tub and onto the walls or floors.