Balancing Texture & Tone: How to Match Bathroom Floor & Wall Tiles
Jul 21, 2025
The beauty of interior design is that anything goes, but the complexity of it is ensuring your choice captures the exact mood you want to create.
Balancing texture, tone, size, and colour is a juggling act; one that interior designers love to experiment with to find the right expression.
There isn’t a right or wrong answer when it comes to bathroom tile combinations, and you’re free to tinker until you stumble upon your signature style. But we can all use a little inspiration along the way…
Keep reading to discover the best bathroom tile combinations, and our hot take on how to match floor and wall tiles in a bathroom.
7 Bathroom Tile Combinations (Shop the Look)
Need inspiration? Explore our photo gallery of the top 10 best bathroom tile combinations, with links to our best-selling products to help you shop the look.
1. Combine Complimentary colours
Go for same-same or utterly different by combining complementary colours for your bathroom floors and/or walls, as seen in our mix of blush pink ceramic tiles and timber-look porcelain.
Shop the look: Art Rose Moroccan Ceramic
2. Pair Soft Patterns With Light Tiles
Shop the look: Moroccan Porcelain Pattern 29
3. Try Herringbone With Mosaics
Herringbone tiles are often subway tiles, styled and laid differently. The use of herringbone creates magnetism that draws the eye. Pairing this style with a lighter, more subdued tile colour makes a statement of the herringbone, creating a chic interior design.
Shop the look: Florence Grey Subway Porcelain 240x60
4. Combine Tile Sizes
Experiment with little and large tiles to create a feature wall and a sense of spaciousness in your bathroom. Using floor and wall tiles of different sizes is a timeless classic; a popular choice for interior designers that’s hard for anyone to get wrong.
Shop the look: Kit Kat Paradiso Green Finger Mosaic 98x15 & Gothic Sand Rectified Porcelain
5. Use Timber-Look Porcelain Tiles
Timber-look porcelain tiles are a relatively new trend, offering the beauty of nature with the strength and resilience of tiles. Combining wood-look tiles with a lighter, more subtle tile (like ceramic tiles), creates a Scandinavian simplicity, making your bathroom feel bright and airy.
Shop the look: Maple Gris Timber Porcelain & Wallpaper Pattern D Italian Ceramic
6. Create Subtle Contrasts
Bold isn’t always more beautiful. For some homes, the perfect choice is a subtle blend of two very different tile textures. For example, the style pictured uses similar colours (lights/pastels), but very different patterns (subway-style and terrazzo) to create a soft, simplistic aesthetic.
Shop the look: Blush Pink Terrazzo STP-34
7. Try Wallpaper Porcelain With Pastels
Wallpaper porcelain (or floral-patterned tiles) is a growing trend for bathrooms – suitable for use in big and small spaces to add a sense of luxury and elegance. Best used as a feature wall, a good combination is to pair these florals with a block, pastel-colour secondary tile.
Shop the look: Wallpaper Pattern B Italian Porcelain & Textured Rossa Wallpaper Italian Ceramic
How to Match Floor and Wall Tiles Like an Interior Designer
You can play around with contrast, colour, and size to create your dream bathroom aesthetic. When experimenting with new tiles, it’s a good idea to order samples of the tiles you like, so you can see how these pair together in real life. Read our top tips on matching floor and wall tiles.
Opt for contrast vs no contrast
When pairing floor and wall tiles, you can choose to add contrast, or no contrast at all. Both options require effort and each style brings something different to the space in terms of its warmth, depth, and overall feel:
- Contrast: You can use two or more types of tiles with distinctive textures, sizes, or colours
- No contrast: You can either use the same floor and wall tiles, or floor and wall tiles with different textures and the same colour
Combine complementary colours
You can combine any colour you like in your bathroom – it’s your bathroom and anything goes! But if you want to style your tiles to create a rich, artistic aesthetic that oozes luxury, try combining colours like:
- All whites: Like whites, creams, ivory, beiges, pearl, vanilla, eggshell, and off-white
- Soft pastels: Like baby blue and soft gray tiles, or sage green and concrete-effect tiles
- Dark colours: Like brown marble and black marble tiles, or walnut and forest green tiles
- Complementary block colours: Like navy blue and coffee brown, or British racing green and timber-effect porcelain tiles
Use sizing wisely
Tiles come in all shapes and sizes, and there are no rules when it comes to how you style these together. Yet each blend offers something different:
- Little and large: The most popular pairing is to use little and large tiles, usually with little tiles on shower walls, on the floor, or as a basin splash back, with the large tiles elsewhere in the room
- All little: Using small tiles, like mosaic tiles, creates visual focus and a sense of intimacy, and this pairing is often used to emulate a sense of culture and luxury in a bathroom
- All large: Pairing large tiles on the walls with large tiles on the floor creates a sense of expansiveness, drawing the eye in long breadths, which can make a bathroom look grand, regardless of its size
- All mid-size: Experimenting with mid-sized tiles together adds definition and a greater sense of depth, which can reflect a sense of intimacy and grace.
Shop Luxury Tiles Today – Find Your Style
Want something you can’t see here? Shop our full collection of luxury tiles today to find your unique style!
At Stone and Tile Projects, we supply luxury tiles in Sydney and across Australia to help you style your bathroom, kitchen, or any interior and outdoor living space.
