Laundry splashback tiles.

The laundry brief is its own thing. A laundry wall deals with detergent, soft water, hard water, the occasional bleach splash and powder residue — a different chemical profile to a kitchen splashback. Specify a tile that handles surfactants and mild bleach, not one chosen purely for a kitchen brief.

Height is usually 600mm above the trough. Standard practice is to tile from the top of the trough or benchtop to the underside of overhead cabinets — typically around 600mm. Full-height tiling looks cleaner and is increasingly common in newer builds.

Subway and mosaic dominate the category. Both offer a flat, easy-to-clean face, forgive the inevitable splatter, and read as classic rather than trend-driven. A laundry tile choice you'll still like in fifteen years is the right call.

Light tiles read as cleaner. A pale splashback shows less daily mess than a dark one — counter-intuitively, dark tiles highlight powder residue and watermarks far more readily than whites and soft greys.

Choose your grout properly. Standard cementitious grout degrades under repeated detergent contact. A polymer-modified grout is the right minimum; epoxy or hybrid grout is better again for a splashback that needs to look sharp for a decade.

Avoid porous stone. Marble, travertine and other calcareous stones etch slowly under detergent and bleach. Save the stone for the ensuite — stick to glazed ceramic or porcelain here. Ask us →