7 Tile Ideas to Make Your Kitchen Shine

1.Make Your Backsplash Fun, Multi-Colored

Why stick with boring when you can be bold and vibrant? Two-inch square tiles in orange, red, white, black, and yellow enliven the normally dark, shadowy area behind the kitchen sink.  

Thinset, grout, and mortar are the usual method of adhering wholesale backsplash tile to walls. 

2.Pebble Tile Behind Stove or as Backsplash

Pebble tile as a backsplash? For any surface that requires frequent cleaning, such as behind stoves, you will want flat tile. Not bumpy tile. Not rocky tile. But looks can be deceiving.

This natural stone java black pebble tile comes attached to mesh sheets that are one-foot square. This means: no laborious piecing together of little tile to little tile. While a bit on the expensive side, it's a reasonably priced installation if you limit it to backsplash areas, as pictured.

As for that pebble problem, the surface of this silver mosaic tile is flat. So it looks like pebbles but it behaves just like conventional flat tile.

3.Glossy, Blue Spanish-Style Tile on Kitchen Counter

If you plan on using ceramic or premium porcelain tile on kitchen counters instead of monolithic materials like solid surface or engineered stone, you'd better do it right. Hand-painted Spanish-style Azul Solistone is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.

But you do pay the price for gorgeous. Solistone is just under $13/sq. ft. For a small kitchen, this translates to about $300 to $400. But when you consider how much cheaper this is than the solid surface or quartz--and the fact that you can DIY it--it starts to look pretty good indeed.

4.Instant Retro by Using White Tile on Kitchen Counter

Here's a challenge for you: From now on, whenever you watch an old movie--1960 or earlier--that displays a kitchen, pay attention to the counters. Chances are good that the counter is made of ceramic or premium porcelain tile. In the absence of today's favored countertops--quartz, solid surface, or slab granite--homeowners' choices would have been limited to laminate counters, metal, wood, or nothing.

Today's style of long, continuous counters atop base cabinets really only took hold in middle-class residential kitchens after WWII. All of that amounts to one thing: Four-inch tiles on the countertop make a kitchen look retro. You may not like the functionality, but you will appreciate the vintage look.

5.Install Alternate-Sized Floor Tiles

This is one of the easiest and oldest ideas around: Use tiles of two different sizes for your kitchen floor. It's one of those inventive (but simple) tricks that few homeowners ever think about. 

This tile is in both 18" x 18" and 12" x 12" sizes, originally from South Cypress. The tile is no longer available there, so consider this an idea that you can apply to any tile of alternate sizes.

6.Make That Stove Surround Shimmer With Mosaic Tile

Their tile is unique and gorgeous.Fantastix is iridescent glass tile--perfect for livening up the dark backsplash and surround area behind kitchen stoves. Each tile is 5/8" x 5/8", with the entire tile sheet being just a hair over a one-foot square (1.15').

7.Gray Slate Tile Create a Modern Kitchen Look

Look carefully or you'll miss it. At first glance, it looks like subway tile. But it's mosaic--an attractive through-body porcelain kitchen backsplash.