When your tile is complicated and expensive…
…then it’s important to plan carefully! This post describes how to plan a handmade tile backsplash design. Handmade tile presents unique installation challenges. You need to take time and patience to plan a handmade tile install to prevent very costly mistakes. Here are tips and tricks to ensure a perfect result.
The Project
Remember that these clients chose some really fancy handmade fireclay tile that featured a translucent ceramic coating and a really cool cracked glaze effect. These tiles were also irregularly sized and shaped, which is a “feature” of all handmade tile.
This post explains the basic steps for successfully planning a perfect layout for any tile backsplash project, particularly a challenging one like this.
The “Before”
The clients’ kitchen space was pretty Scandinavian 1970s with straightforward modernist cabinets and an off-white quartz countertop. The sink, fixtures, and appliances were all stainless steel, and the layout was simple galley-style. There was no origional backsplash to remove. The previous homeowners had left just plain drywall between the countertop and wall cabinets.
A bare drywall base is perfect for a backsplash installation. Backsplash tile doesn’t need a concrete backerboard substrate. And waterproofing is needless overkill for a countertop backsplash.
The Design Goal
The clients wanted a funky teal handmade tile backsplash for two reasons. First, they wanted to add some pop to the otherwise subdued kitchen decor. It was a true 1970s house, so this would really match the vintage of the home. And second, they wanted to soften the otherwise utilitarian Scandinavian design elements by introducing some handmade irregularity.
The overall goal was to create “regular irregularity,” balancing Scandinavian rectilinear-ity with some 1970s vintage Austin individuality.
The Funky Tile
The handmade nature of the tile itself would create a bit of built-in design irregularity.Because each tile would be a little bit differently sized and shaped, there would be just a touch of unevenness in the grout line widths between any particular tiles. There were also slight variations in color shade and other color “imperfections” between each tile, which would add to this irregularity effect.
And finally, every tile had a randomly cracked clear top glaze that contrasted really nicely with the very rectilinear lines of the overall subway-style layout. Each tile was truly a little bit unique, and changed character depending on which angle you looked from.
So, these folks wanted to plan a handmade tile backsplash install that would look purposeful but not exactly uniform, logical but not regimented. Kinda like a scruffy Scandinavian in an otherwise impeccably tailored handmade teal tuxedo.
The Creative Pattern
Remember that irregular handmade rectangular tile requires relatively generous grout line widths for an overall even installation. Also, the lippage problems caused by the randomly concave and convex warps in even machine-made rectangular ceramic tiles is always exacerbated by a full offset subway pattern (sometimes called “50 offset” or “half offset”). These folks therefore chose a 1/8-in wide grout line width (pretty much the skinniest practically possible), and a relatively complex pseudo-random “1/4 step pattern” for the offsets:
It’s not actually possible to make a truly random subway offset pattern using same-size rectangular tile. But this pattern comes real close, since it takes four full rows to repeat. Plus it has a sneakily Texan-appropriate rhythm for 8-in wide tile: TWO inches left, FOUR inches right, TWO inches right, FOUR inches left, and REPEAT!
The Corner Bits
One key challenge for any offset-style rectangular tile backsplash install is planning ahead to prevent unsightly little skinny bits stuffed into corner joints. Ideally, you want inside corners to continue the look of the overall field tile pattern. You want it to look like completely full tiles have been magically squished into each inside seam with perfect foresight.
This of course takes planning. And the easiest way to clearly plan is to simply lay out literal tiles and mark up the wall with what different starting point options would look like. You’re going to cover the wall with tile anyway. So there’s no harm in using magic marker to make sure that a layout pattern will work.
The Level Challenge
You also want to be real careful about where the horizontal grout lines will land when dealing with kitchen wall cabinets that are already installed. You don’t want to be stuck with impossible tile cuts around cabinet trim or little tile slivers filling vertical gaps. Assume nothing, and measure everything!
This especially applies to checking level. In an ideal world, every cabinet and countertop installer will always make their work level to the center of the earth. But in practice, hardly anything in the built reno world is ever perfectly on the level.
For a 12-ft wide countertop like this one, even an out-of-level difference of just 1/16-in per foot from one side to the other would mean almost a full half-tile-width difference in height between the left and right corners of the backsplash.
Realize that you can’t put a completely rectilinear grid on a fundamentally cockeyed surface without some seriously unbalanced results. First determine just how cockeyed your backsplash install wall is. Then, plan accordingly!
The Bottom Line
Properly planning a handmade tile backsplash layout takes time and care. You can’t just start slaping handmade tile on a wall from a randomly picked starting point and expect the result to look good. Expensive finicky tile reqires care and patience. So just follow these planning steps for perfect results:
- Work with the material limitations (in this case, the handmade tile needed a minimum 1/8-in grout line width).
- Decide on a centerpoint for your pattern that will best balance the final look (in this case, centering the overall tile pattern on the sink faucet was key for preventing an off-kilter optical effect).
- Check for tile slivers in corners (ideally, you want to make it look like the field tile pattern is continuous, with full tile widths mushed into both the left and right wall corner turns).
- Make sure the countertop and cabinets are level, and plan to compensate if they’re not (you can cheat a slightly cockeyed situation, but not without planning for it first).
Seriously, you CANNOT skimp on this planning work if you’re wanting a perfect final result. For example, here’s a spoiler alert look ahead to the final result on this job:
Sometimes you have to make a Sophie’s choice between a centered pattern versus unbalanced tile slivers in the corners, or a full tile height start at the countertop versus less than half tile slices going into the wall cabinet bottoms. Even in those tough cases, planning ahead means you can at least make conscious tradeoff choices rather than just leaving everything up to chance.
Hopefully this advice can help you plan a handmade tile backsplash project of your own. If you’re thinking about actually doing the backsplash install yourself, then this installation explanation post has all the details on how I actually put these tiles on the kitchen walls once the planning was done.