When homeowners start planning a bathroom remodel, the conversation usually begins with tile color and material. But in our experience, the decision that does the most work in the finished room is the pattern. The same white tile reads spa-calm in a stacked layout, tailored in herringbone, and playful as penny round. Here are three patterns we return to again and again — and where each one earns its place.

Herringbone: Movement Without Noise

Herringbone takes a simple rectangular tile and gives it direction. The zigzag draws the eye along a wall, which makes it especially good at making a tub surround or shower wall feel taller and more intentional. We love it in white or soft neutral tile where the pattern itself — not the color — is the statement. A storage niche set into a herringbone wall, trimmed cleanly, reads as a custom detail buyers and guests always notice. One practical note: herringbone has more cuts and more layout decisions than a stacked pattern, so installer skill matters. Crooked herringbone is forever.

Penny Round: The Workhorse with Charm

Penny tile has been showing up in American bathrooms for over a century, and it has stuck around for a practical reason: all those small tiles mean lots of grout lines, and lots of grout lines mean real slip resistance underfoot. That makes penny round one of our favorite choices for shower floors — it feels secure when wet and conforms easily to the slope toward the drain. Aesthetically, it brings a soft, vintage texture that balances beautifully against larger-format wall tile or a wood-look accent band. Choose your grout color deliberately: matched grout makes the floor read as a single texture, while contrast grout turns the pattern into a graphic feature.

Hexagon: From Classic to Luxury

Hexagon runs the full range depending on scale and material. Small white hex in a vintage bath feels period-correct and charming. Scale it up and render it in marble, and it becomes something else entirely — we used a marble hexagon mosaic across an entire master bath shower in one of our favorite projects, and the geometry plus the natural veining gave the room a quiet, jewel-box luxury. We wrote about that project in detail in our marble hexagon master bath post.

Mixing Patterns Without Chaos

The bathrooms that photograph best usually use two patterns, not five: a quiet field tile over most of the room and one moment of pattern where it counts — the shower floor, the tub surround, a niche. Keep the color palette tight (two tile colors plus grout is plenty) and let scale do the contrasting. If the wall tile is large-format, go small on the floor. If the floor is busy, calm the walls down.

As a design + build firm, Olive + Baxter handles both sides of the tile equation — the designer who draws the layout and the crew that sets it are the same team, which is exactly what patterns like herringbone demand. Explore our Tile services or our Bathroom Remodeling page, or contact us to start planning your own pattern moment.