Bathrooms require the same level of care as living rooms and kitchens when it comes to choosing the finishes. Yet size and brightness are two factors that aren’t always considered when it comes to designing bathrooms. In the case of new builds or properties where it's possible to alter the floorplan, you’re more likely to have the good fortune of a bigger space to play with. But if you're stuck with a small, narrow bathroom, you’ll need to adopt solutions which maximise its user potential while creating an air of elegance and attention to detail. In this article, we provide a series of tips to help you rise to the challenge.
Which tiles to choose for a small, narrow bathroom
March 3, 2020
How to make the right choice
Choosing your tiles is no easy task, particularly when you consider the huge variety on offer on the market. There are a whole host of attributes that you need to take into account when choosing the tiles for your bathroom, particularly if space is at a premium. From formats to thicknesses via dimensions, shapes, colours and decorative effects, there’s certainly a lot to think about. To help you in your search, we recommend that you stay focused on three key areas: practicality, aesthetics and sturdiness. For example, Casalgrande Padana’s Opus collection – which draws inspiration from traditional cementine tiles – offers a vibrant, modern tiling solution, incorporating a mixture of decorations and colours which make it a timeless choice.
The choice of colour
In order to avoid emphasising the lack of space, our top tip is that you focus on neutral tones – either warm or cold – to bring character to the room without cluttering it with decorative elements. Pantone’s colour of the year for 2020 is “Classic Blue”, an ultramarine, bold, vibrant shade of blue which works well in a bathroom, where blues are excellent alternatives to more traditional shades of sand, dove-grey and grey. However, this elegant, deep colour needs to be used wisely. Dark colours absorb a lot more light than lighter colours, so can make a space feel smaller. In order to avoid this, the best choice is to play around with textures, perhaps by opting for the resin-effect tiles from the R-Evolution collection by Casalgrande Padana.
Surfaces
Casalgrande Padana’s collections offer a wide range of different tiling solutions for walls and floors, some contrasting and some complementary. The company’s aim is to accommodate the tastes and requirements of a highly diverse audience. For instance, our wood-effect porcelain stoneware is available in the Class Wood collection, in a Walnut finish, and in the Country Wood collection, in the more intense Tortora – both are intriguing ideas for bathrooms if you prefer a more natural, less urban style. Our wood-effect porcelain stoneware tiles make it possible for you to keep the same flooring throughout the home, with no interruptions between one room and another.
Dimensions
Opting for standard formats and rectangular tiles makes installation easier, allowing you to avoid unwanted wastage in terms of materials and money. Sure enough, when you’re dealing with a particularly small and narrow bathroom, you’re much better off opting for regular formats and benefiting from their modularity and ease of installation – though graphic effects and contrasts can be obtained too. One example of this is Casalgrande Padana’s multi-format, marble-effect Marte collection, which can be paired with finishes and colour options featuring soft, delicate tones.
Installation
There are many different options when it comes to laying your tiles: straight, end-to-end and diagonal are just a couple of the styles to choose from. Our tip here is to make the most of the surfaces available, opting for traditional, minimalist laying styles with invisible joins. By adopting this approach, the continuous surface you’ll create will help you to build a sense of uniformity. Alternatively, you could decide to focus on contrasts between shapes, colours and materials by combining complementary elements. There are a few options you can use to create an optical illusion of more space, too. If urban solutions are your thing, the Resin collection features porcelain stoneware tiles which play around with materials and textures.
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