How Tile Shapes Can Influence Perception of a Room

One important thing to consider when purchasing tiles is their size, they come in a huge variety of different shapes. People often choose their tiles relative to the space they’re being lain; big room big tiles for example and this isn’t wrong, but different sizes have an impact on the overall appearance or perception of a room, they can make a small room look big and vice versa. In this post we’re going to explain just how you can influence the perception of a room.

Big tiles help rooms look bigger

Naturally, bigger tiles like 60x60cm take up more space, furniture and fixtures will look smaller and more spaced out due to their size compared to the large tiles and will make the room seem much more open. The grout lines also help amplify this effect, as they highlight the huge tiles and the large space that they cover. It’s important to note this won’t work on small tight spaces such as a small bathroom or a cloakroom/porch, this is because there won't be enough room to lay the amount of tiles needed to create this effect for people to see it. It could also turn quite costly as chances are a lot of tiles will need to be cut in order to get the full area covered so it’s best to avoid big tiles in these types of room.

Small tiles to help a room look smaller

Similar to the previous technique smaller tiles take up less space meaning your furniture and fixtures will look bigger in comparison to these smaller tiles. However, try to avoid tiles smaller than 30x60cm due to the amount of grout lines you’ll have, it can leave spaces looking overwhelming and busy. You could use tiles smaller then 30x60 in certain sections such as a splashback or a back wall like below, combined with 30x60cm tiles on the floor for example.

Placement of tiles

If you have a gallery kitchen or if your kitchen is a bit on the smaller side a brilliant way of making it seem bigger is using wooden effect tiles horizontally from your door. Due to the direction they run they’ll appear to stretch the gap between work surfaces making the room appear larger than it is. Additionally, if you lay them vertically it’ll appear smaller as it gives the effect of squeezing the room. Using a herringbone pattern with your tiles achieves the same thing thanks to the wide gap between the sides it creates the illusion that they stretch quite far which in turn makes the room stretch.

Let there be light

Using light-coloured tiles is a great and trendy way of opening your room up and making it appear larger. With these brighter colours your room will appear more spaced out as the increased light will highlight the gaps between your fixtures and furnishings and make the room look less busy.

You can also incorporate natural light to help amplify this effect, as it will aid in the effect of spacing things out. Natural light also goes well light-coloured tiles, it will highlight any sort of pattern in it’s design and if the tile has a gloss finish it will reflect the light around the room illuminating it.