Mosaic tiling. Is it worth it?

[Terris]

Hi! I`ve been choosing what to put inside our bathroom for a while and she really wants mosaic tiles (handmade mosaic tiles) like in Greece baths or sauna or in a pool. I think, you guessed what i`m talking about.
So, i read forums and most of the pros recommend to use bigger tiles. Why and where we can put small ones? Why the bigger are the better? (besides having rough time to clean).
Thanks for replies.
Stan.

 

[Jadnashua]

Grout can be a pain both to clean, install, and otherwise maintain. Style has drifted to, in some cases, huge tiles, where you have almost no grout lines in the field (you can get tiles now over 10' long and about 4' wide!).

Variations in small tile can make it hard to set them into a nice, flat surface, and when received from the factory, often, there may be one or more that isn't perfectly aligned with the others meaning you may need to remove it (them) and hand set them individually to get a 'perfect' job. It can be tedious and error prone.

While smaller tiles are generally called for on a shower floor to conform to the 'bowl' shaped surface, if you design things and execute it well, you can use larger format tile there.

More grout lines creates better grip when wet than a typical larger tile.

If the mosaic tile have a pattern or layout, much greater care must be done to verify the orientation when installing, or you can 'ruin' the overall look. Especially if the tile are not rectangles, hiding the sheet edges can sometimes be problematic as then they must not only be oriented the same way, they must interlock that pattern edge between sheets to look the same as those in the field.