Saturday note: This story has been updated. I will continue to update it as more information becomes available.
The classic vintage tile colors made for many years by B&W Tile are being discontinued. The last date of production is tomorrow, June 7. However, if you were planning to buy soon, there is still stock available, the company told me via phone today.
Update: It seems special orders, with 100 s.f. minimums, may still be possible (see more, below).
Above: Photos from my visit to B&W Tile in 2017.
I learned about the impending change from a reader yesterday. I called B&W several times to try and connect with the owner or a manager and get more information, but they have not been available. The only information we have is that the classic vintage colors are being discontinued, and that new colors will be introduced.
Note/added June 8: Another reader has emailed me indicating the B&W has told her that minimum special orders of 100 s.f. are going to be available. I will update this if and when I confirm it with the company. To be sure, this would be good news for anyone doing a project that taps a hard-to-find color, with those minimum requirements.
Alas, B&W Tile was a favorite go-to place for relatively affordable vintage-colored 4×4 field tile. Their Mamie Pink was just about perfect — Kate used it in her glowy wonderful bathroom. As I recall, the company once told me their colors had been in production for decades.
That said, if you are in need of retro color square field tile, there are a few other companies that make pastel lollipop tile colors that are either (1) pretty good or (2) close enough considering we are a niche market. My list (see the bullet below) spans mass market to high-end custom retailers. Some of these companies have tile available immediately — for example see my update story on some mid century colors from Daltile now available at Home Depot for as little as $2.50/s.f. Others have lead times. Do your research well ahead to time so you know what’s available and how long it’s going to take to get your order.
Where to get colored bathroom field tiles — you’ll need to dig in:
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Gregg says
Dang! I’ve been scheming some repairs and improvements to the bathrooms and kitchen of the family house of 53 years—1956 Cinderella ranch. I was resting easy because I _knew_ there was replacement tile available. This is what I get for stalling.
ineffablespace says
The group of people who are replacing bathrooms in midcentury modern houses with *authentic-looking* midcentury houses just isn’t big enough.
People are replacing mid-century kitchens and baths with millennial modern/contemporary kitchens and thinking that these are just fine and compatible with their midcentury modern house. (Which is exactly what people thought their 1980s contemporary baths were in these houses–now we can see the difference).
I belong to several design groups, some of which are MCM-specific and even people who are supposedly lovers of MCM are often not really accurate in their thoughts about kitchens and baths in particular.
First off, many of them have this idea that MCM means a glass box or an Eichler and that’s about it. But even in the case study houses, glass boxes, and Eichlers had bathrooms that looked like 1940s -1960s bathrooms. There was not a group of special fixtures and tiles that went in “Modern” houses versus “Modest” houses.
I posted a series of bathrooms from Case Study, glass box and other very modern houses of the day in one of these groups and some of the responses were “These may be Mid-Century bathrooms but they are Not Mid-Century MODERN, these are traditional Mid-Century bathrooms.” (Try telling the homeowner in 1950 that their house is traditional).
When I posted the exteriors of the houses (which included Farnsworth House), the naysayers rather than understanding my point said things like “So why are you so hung up on bathrooms? Whatever…”
So really I think there is a lot of lipservice to MCM right now, because it is popular, but most people’s idea of MCM is not an authentic MCM, but a contemporary millennial version of it, and that’s why these companies are still discontinuing the authentic products.
Pam Kueber says
Always an interesting topic. I think there may be examples out there of what I’d term original “mid century modern bathrooms” in the way that the term mid century modern was originally defined — in particular as in “lacking unnecessary ornamentation”. Agree with you: Most bathrooms in mid century modern houses, and in mid century modest houses, and in just plain houses built in the middle of the 20th century circa 1953-1963, were mass market 4×4 tiles / mosaic floors / often or usually in pastel colors / Mamie pink predominant / with fixtures that were carryover from prewar period or updated somewhat.
Mid century modern bathrooms would likely use the same fixtures. Tile would be 4×4 or 1×1, in organic color; or maybe in a color block / Mondrian-esque palette. Rare to see these in the wild. And even then, blurry line with plain ole mid century bathrooms.
What I see, when I look, people doing in houses today in the name of “mid century modern bathroom” is: Contemporary, not period-correct mid century modern.
Agree with you: Purists are a small market.
ineffablespace says
Even Frank Lloyd Wright houses of the period tend to have 4×4 tile, and he (or his current wife who apparently had some input) seemed to like pink bathroom fixtures. Of course, FLW was more of a Proto-modernist than a Modernist and a number of modernist architects of the period thought he was pretty old hat.
I do have photos of original, very modern, bathrooms in MCM houses and they tend to be porcelain 2×2 (or there was a 1.75, I think) with very plain vanities, often with sinks undermounted in stone tops or laminate tops(another thing I was told “could not be original” –And I don’t know why–Victorian vanity sinks were almost always undermounted, it’s not a “new” technology.
Anyway, I do have examples of these “lacking ornament” style of bath, but I have *many* more examples of pretty typical-looking or even Mid Century Regency baths in some very Modern houses.
People used what was available. Baths were mostly utilitarian and often didn’t get heavily designed. Nothing was designed in a vacuum and people picked what they liked. Etc. and so forth.
Pam Kueber says
Yes, not spending a lot of time on this response so it’s rough but I agree and would add: I tend to think of mid century modern design having more to do with architecture and furniture — not so much the utilitarian spaces, as you so rightly point out. Of course, there were important industrial designers involved in the plumbing fixture and kitchen appliance and housewares spheres. But, how many folks today would really think of Henry Dreyfuss for Crane bathrooms sinks, toilets and tubs “mid century modern”? Or how about all the steel kitchen cabinets I’m obsessed with? What about my Peter Muller Munk pots, now in a museum … so ornamental! https://retrorenovation.com/2015/11/10/peter-muller-munk-designs/
Very hard to slice and dice. But that’s a difficulty with labels.
Dan O. says
Couple things worth mentioning: I recently ran across a vendor known as Quarrytile (http://quarrytile.com/), they have some connection to Daltile through their Natural Hues line. Of greatest interest is that they offer custom colors on their “Services” page. I have no idea how much tile one would need to order to get a custom color but this might be worth looking into (group buy?).
The other thing is that B&W used to offer their tile as “bisque” or unfinished/unglazed; I thought this particularly cool since they are (were?) the only outfit still making some of the more oddball trim pieces one would need to replicate a full on mid-century mortar-bed type installation (where the tile is 3/4″ proud of any adjacent plaster wall surfaces). Of course unglazed tile means you’d still need somebody to glaze it with the desired color, I never looked into how in the world that might get done.
Pam Kueber says
Wow – thanks for the tip! I will contact them and see what they say!
Katy McCoy says
Slightly tangential: how do you match tile? I have a bathroom with pink tiles but the floor has blue tiles. I’ll have to ask the former owner whether they did that on purpose but I don’t care for it and want to put pink tiles back in. I could take a photograph but it seems like the color isn’t always exact. Is my only choice to start collecting tiles from these sources until I find a match? I noticed the phot above with a variegated tile – seems like that was one solution to the problem but not the floor I want.
Karen says
I hear you! I was fortunate to pick up about 100 tiles in pink but trying to match to get more is exasperating and I’m not willing to drive hours to find out the tiles advertised don’t match. And photos depend so much on light and angle. Good luck to you.