This bathroom, tiled in bright blue mosaic to offset the home’s limited materials and color palette, calls for a simple vanity. The sinks, toilets, and tubs are by Villeroy & Boch, while the faucets and towel rails are by Grohe and Avenir, respectively.

The tile is by Carter.

HEXAGON WALL TILES

The outdoor fire pit.

The Salvatori marble tiles in the bathroom were added at the last minute, once everyone was confident that they would not put the project over budget.

The entire room is surfaced in white mosaics from Hisbalit; the bath fixtures are brass and sourced from a local Czech retailer.

The Heath tiles in the bathroom were hand-selected from boxes of factory seconds.

Homeowners Cecilia Tham and Yoel Karaso renovate their home in Barcelona, harmoniously overlapping elements of the old and the new. Photo by: Gunnar Knechtel

Renovating the old mill was a family effort, and Blee called on his sister Kate, a textile designer based in London, to lend a helping hand with the tile work. Kate's repertoire also extends to building installations, including a ceramic wall in the City and Islington Center for Lifelong Learning in North London. "She had several boxes left over," Blee recalls, "which meant another opportunity to use something that was lying around." The tiles, with finishes ranging from heavy glazes to matte coats, offered textural variety, which brother and sister used to "play around with the idea of reflection from the roof light."

The ensuite master bathroom features Ann Sacks slate floor tile, contrasted with white Carrara marble that wraps the Kohler Tea for Two tub. The shower features tile from Heath Ceramics.

Tiles from Ramacieri-Soligo brighten the bathroom, off the hall. But when it comes to modern bathroom vanities, gray, as seen here, is a popular choice.

The master bath is clad in Area tiles from Mirage.

In the shower: custom Carocim tile, created in Morocco.

In the bathroom, plain white tiles line the walls and ceiling. The floors are natural stone and the fixtures are by VOLA. Lassen built the sink himself.

Bold color is embraced in the home’s first bathroom, with tilework by Trend Mosiacs. Faucets are by Grohe and vanities are by Hastings. A Flos Glo-Ball pendant light illuminates the space.

A carpet of custom tile created by Navone punctuates a corridor on the first floor.

The owners of this home selected a geometric-patterned glass tile backsplash by Island Stone. The glass tile keeps the space bright, and the pattern adds interest.

The owners wanted to have a clear distinction between the more public areas of the home and the more private ones. In the master bathroom, which is on the lower floor, tiles were used from the Italian company Trend.

In the living room of the Barcelona apartment designer Elina Vila D’Acosta-Calheiros shares with her husband, Ginés Gorriz, Arne Jacobsen Swan chairs join a sofa by Piero Lissoni for Living Divani. The cabinet is from Cappellini, as is the Marcel Wanders Big Shadow lamp.

Paths of Andalusian tile and intervening plaster walls help to delineate space in the expansive apartment, which is centered around an internal entry courtyard. The armchair, designed by Peter and Alison Smithson, is covered in a Josef Frank textile from Just Scandinavian. The white piece just behind it is a repurposed Austrian stove that’s now used as a storage device.

To create a bit more texture in the kitchen and baths, the couple added classic checkered tiles from the local hardware store—an inexpensive option that broke up the polished concrete floors spanning the rest of the house. Pavonetti designed and built the pedestal sinks using reclaimed cedar siding.

For the bathroom inside a renovated Hollywood bungalow, architect Noah Walker used a simple palette of gray and white tile, black countertops, and stainless steel fixtures. "I love minimal bathrooms with natural light, so less is more, and pay attention to the details," he advises.

Rock stands in the doorway to the boys’ bathroom, which is lined with semi-gloss Modern Dimensions tiles from Daltile. “We wanted it to be playful,” Hufft says, “so we chose each color and laid out the tile distribution in Photoshop.”

Stacey and Doug prepare food before the kitchen's massive wall of soothing tile from Heath Ceramics.

The bathroom, located just adjacent to the kitchen, features a pattern of gray and turquoise tiles that climbs from the floors up the walls. They serve as a burst of color among the predominately white walls elsewhere, transforming the bathroom into one of the apartment’s most striking spaces.

A wall of three-inch-wide cedar slats contrasts with the tile backsplash.

Bathroom A creative way of cutting costs is on display in son Nate’s bathroom, where the wall tiles are arranged in a whimsical, irregular pattern making use of slim sections of tile cut for transitions and corners. “We came up with a pattern that could incorporate random sizes so we were able to order the exact amount of tile that we needed,” Bischoff says. “It allowed us to get the most out of the tile price because there wasn’t that 20 percent that [would normally go] into the landfill.” The two-bowl sink is the Vitviken model from Ikea; it’s topped with a chrome Hansgrohe faucet and accented by Ikea’s Godmorgon medicine cabinets customized by MADE.

A mosaic tile wall softens the laboratory-like effect of the glossy kitchen cabinets.

The final, layered look of the pool and its surroundings—which mitigates a 30-inch drop from house to guesthouse—was completed in 2008.

White tiles — hydraulic ones on the floor and “biselado” (meaning “beveled”) ones on the walls — make for a tranquil bathroom.

Dunbar describes the bathroom as an outside-in room because it has light, air, and sometimes, when it drizzles and the skylight left open, even rain. Designed for exactly these circumstances, a blue-glass mosaic tile floor is laid at an angle to drain with ease.

Mexican encaustic tiles with a geometric floral pattern from Mosaicos Terra line the bathroom in Austin’s studio, where a full-height window near the wall-mounted shower provides a view to the expansive outdoor scenery. A vintage kewpie doll sculpture sits atop the custom terrazzo-and-granite counter; the steel mirror is from Artes de México.

The bathroom features white and black tile and a small rock bed.

The shower provides a glimpse of the outdoors.

The Sydney home of Leanne Carter-Taylor and Trent Carter-Brugman via the Design Files.