Joint colors - Help :-)

Hello dear builders,

we still need to decide on grout colors. This is quite important for us since the entire house will be tiled. With different tiles, but all come in warm tones, on the ground floor the floor tile is everywhere in various dark brown tones, then we have a pure white glossy wall tile in the guest bathroom and a wall mosaic in white/blue/grey. (Office, bedroom and auxiliary rooms have medium to light brown tones.) Upstairs we have a light yellow speckled ("Sand"? but definitely yellow, not sand-colored) floor tile and a very light beige wall tile.

The tiler initially wanted us to use grey everywhere; silver grey seems to be his favorite. Why, he couldn’t quite explain clearly, it would supposedly be low-maintenance? Personally, I imagine grey would contrast horribly with the brown and especially the yellow tones. We also have no grey in the furnishings and no anthracite, no black. No chrome furniture, no glass tables. Wooden furniture, kitchen in "Magnolia".

What do you think of my ideas: medium brown tiles for the dark brown floor tile. (Medium brown because the site manager said he had dark anthracite-colored grout and wasn’t happy with it, as very dark colors are apparently prone to showing dirt. If you’re happy with dark brown, let me know.) In the guest bathroom I would even dare a light/medium blue grout on the wall, because that would go well with the tile mosaic (sea motif) and the white tiles. The guest bathroom can be a bit more “daring,” a bit more fun and colorful. Later some cheerful sea/fish decorations will go in there, you know all the kinds of stuff. Well, silver grey could also work here. But it wouldn’t be as fun.

The hardest part is the upstairs bathroom with its light yellow floor tiles and light beige wall tiles. The grout shouldn’t be too light, again medium brown – at least on the floor? Or would one grout color for floor and wall be better and important? Beige or "Pergamon" are options? Too sensitive? Can you combine a light beige wall tile with a darker medium brown grout?

Of course I will still get advice from the specialty store here, but they often have standard answers that correspond to the respective fashion. That’s at least my impression. “That’s how you do it nowadays.” “Many do it that way.” – The craftsmen take it up a notch: “That’s how we’ve always done it!”

Best regards

willWohnen

Silver gray matches almost every tile.

Oh yes... I also spent more time on this than I initially thought. Depending on what you want to achieve with the grout, you should also choose the color accordingly. That means if the surface should appear calm, then the grout should have a similar color tone as the tile. If the surface should stand out and draw attention to something, then rather a contrasting grout. I prefer calm surfaces, which is why we have dark chocolate grout for brown floor tiles and Pergamon grout for beige wall tiles. We are very satisfied with both. Your ideas are already pretty good. You just have to be careful if you have blue grout applied to white tiles. Our tiler once told a story about a case where he couldn't properly remove this grout material from the tile surface afterwards, and there was a kind of colored film on the light tile. It's definitely not that easy. I hope I could help a little.

Thank you for your contribution and your time, that helps me a lot! I actually want to keep it as calm as possible in principle. I have since been to the specialty store and held the color sticks supported by our GÜ next to our tiles. There was exactly one shade of blue, which surprisingly also appears in our mosaic. *amazed* You have to be lucky sometimes. Therefore, we might really do that - but thanks for your note about the "leftovers," then the tiler should start with those inside the shower (walled in), then I will check it before he comes to the rest of the walls. We might also consider only doing part of the walls with blue grout, so that the blue of the mosaic is picked up again. Regarding the brown floor tiles and beige wall tiles, several shades fit, but I'm still a bit clueless about which is probably the easiest to maintain. Darker is better on the floor, right? For the ground floor where the brown floor tiles also cover the hallway in front of the front door, we will probably take bali brown, which is very inconspicuous, a bit darker and rather gray-brown. I think in the entrance area grout will quickly turn gray. Caramel would look much warmer and prettier, but for how long...? The most difficult is the upstairs bathroom, with the yellow floor tiles and light beige wall tiles. Caramel would basically work for both, it’s medium light and slightly yellowish. But especially in the bathroom, I think the floor grout in front of the tub and shower will darken fastest, so maybe the darker brown would be better(?). And the color "Beige" fits the wall tiles perfectly - that fascinates me. That would be absolutely tone on tone, the grout would be almost invisible. But very light! They unfortunately didn’t have "Chocolate Brown" literally available here. That sounds nice. Of course, I thank you too. I still don’t understand it. No one puts on a brown jacket with gray pants or wears a brown belt with gray pants.

I told our tiler that too, WillWohnen. I just found the idea of brown and gray simply ugly... But silver gray is another case altogether. My in-laws really have it with all tiles (white, cream, light blue, blue, blue-gray) and before we built, I never found it ugly.

Before I built anything, I never really noticed anything at all, I've realized hihi. I'm basically blind when it comes to houses and apartments including my own and just accepted everything as it was. (Well, almost. Some things in the apartment were annoying.) But with your in-laws, I find silver gray fitting again for blue tones. For blue-gray, of course, yes. Only with cream I imagine it, uh, quite ugly.