How to Design Kitchens and Bathrooms using Mexican Talavera Tile

For thousands of years artisans in Mexico and other places have made tiles by hand and painted them with unique designs handed down in families for generations. The process of producing these tiles is time consuming and labor intensive, yet their cost is comparable to machine produced products which lack the intense beauty of these handmade creations. Moreover, when put together with a charcoal grout, these can be the easiest showers and showers to clean and maintain (I know! I hardly ever have to clean my showers, which are used by 7 people!).

Advantages of Talavera Tile for Showers and Countertops:

• Unmatched handmade beauty
• Environmentally friendly processing
• each tile is a unique piece of art
• easy cleaning of tiles and grout with soap and water
• used with a dark grout, these tiles seldom need cleaning in a shower
• one of a kind designs are possilbe

Disadvantages of Talavera Tile

• important to get a tiler familiar with installing handmade tiles
• some breakage may occur while installing, so ordering extra tiles is important
• tiles can chip (although I have only a couple of small chips in 7 years with children)
• often need to order online and tiles are sometimes made to order if you choose ones out of stock, so you may need to wait

Design Ideas

After looking at all the beautiful tiles available, you may think that the greatest disadvantage of talavera tiles is too many choices. Many of these tiles can be found at different manufacuturers and represent patterns which have been made for centuries. Other patterns are more recent innovations. Your tile installer, contractor, interior designer, talavera tile manufacturer or best friend might be a source of inspiration. Check out these videos as well. However, one of the best features of talvera tile is the chance to create your own artwork by combining the tiles in your own design. Here are some ideas:

• Choose a main color scheme first

Talavera tiles come both in solid colors and in designs. We started each of our bathroom and kitchen designs by choosing a solid color combination first. You can use one color for both the background and edging or choose to use a different color for the edging tiles. . The main choices are blue, white, yellow, green and brown (terracotta). We wanted to use all the tile colors, so we did a different main color combination in each room. One bathroom uses white background tiles with blue edging. Another bathroom uses green with blue for the shower, but solid green for the counter. In our kitchen, we used yellow for the counter with a terracotta border. Included with your choice of color will be a decision on whether to use watercolor tiles, which are lightly glazed and streaked with color, or solid color tiles which have a bold and solid color look. The watercolor tiles have a more modern look, while the solid colors are a more classic style.

• Decide on a a Design Pattern

After you have decided on the color tiles you want to use, you will want to look at the patterned tiles. The patterned tiles are either single designs, border designs (which are meant to be placed in a row) or four tile designs which form a pattern when placed in a four-tile square. Some of the border tiles can also be four-tile square patterns, and all of the single tile designs can also be used as a border.

For a countertop, you can use a border design around the top edge, or at the corner. You can leave the countertop plain or put a few scattered single tile designs on top. We did this design both in our white and blue bathroom and on our kitchen countertop. For our green bathroom countertop, we just put a simple border, knowing we were going to add a colorful mirror and other colorful decorations in the room.

For showers, you have more space for design. You can do a boarder around the entire shower, and also a set of stacked borders in the middle, as we did in our white and blue shower. In addition, you can put in a tile mural or a set of four tiles, as we did in our flower insert. We used a row of different single patterned tiles in a pattern on the small bench of each shower.

• Decide on the Tiles to Include in your Pattern

The patterned tiles are a dizzying variety. In general, they fall into three groups: one or two color tiles in classic designs, three or more colored tiles painted with a flat glaze, and four colored intricate designs with raised glaze. Most of the classic designs have a white background and work best if you have a background color that matches them. I think they are especially nice in on a white background. Although I was not expecting to like our white and blue bathroom as much as our blue and green one, I have found that the white and blue with yellow accents is a very calming style and very visually appealing with simple chrome fixtures and black and white photos. It is actually perhaps my favorite room in our house!

However, the more complex patterned tiles are very beautiful to look at individually. You will probably find it hard to choose. It helps to choose ones which have the same background colors, like all blue or yellow in order to have them look good together. If you have a lot that you really love, you might want to scattered ones on the countertop or a row of patterned tiles on every third tile on the backsplash.

Another idea is to use squares of four-tile patterns or four-tiles surrounded by border tiles or a row of similar tiles, such as the backsplash we did behind our stove. We also used several variations on our diamond patterns which are embedded in our saltillo floor.

• Be sure to let your installer make suggestions

The diamond patterns of talavera embedded in our Saltillo floor throughout our house were suggested by our first tile installer. He intially laid down the Saltillo, then took up four tiles and cut them diagonally, replaced four of them and then filled in the remaining square with a 16 tile pattern of talavera. We had a different tile installer for another part of our house but he had no problem in following that same instillation idea. Your tile installer has a lot of experience with working out patterns, so they may be able to see a design which might better fit your situation. Our installers helped us several times to adjust the tile design to better fit our particular bathroom. In our white and blue shower, we had originally planned another border line of single tiles, but our tile installer suggested the pattern of tiles mixed with the white tiles. Several times, our tile installer helped us to adjust the original plan in a way which made the installation work better as far as tile cuts and also was much more aesthetically pleasing.

• Enjoy your Unique and Beautiful Tile!

Lots of people have granite, marble and other tile surfaces. These are all very nice, but nothing is as beautiful to look at and original as talavera. Every day, you will see something new in the patterns and enjoy looking at this practical art.