Octagon and dot tile creates scalloped edges — a terrific bathroom design idea

I have never seen this floor tile pattern idea before, and I love it: In Laura’s 1947 midcentury modest house includes this original bathroom with 4″ octagon-and-dot floor tiles that are also used as the bottom row of wall tiles to create a very pleasing “scalloped” edge look. How very clever — and back in the day, when octagon and dot tile was more widely available in lots of colors, it would have been a very cheap and cheerful design idea. We still have a few places to find tiles like this, if you want to recreate this look. Continue on for a close-up of the design — and my resources to find octagon-and-dot tiles today.

To create this bathroom tile design, you will have to find octagon tile in a real color (see my resource list below), add a “dot” in a lighter color… and then repeat the color in the dot up the walls in 4″ square tiles. You could do this, really, with any two complementary colors of tile; however, I think there is something particularly pleasing about the dark-floor-light-wall combo that makes the scallops work.

Laura requests forgiveness at the state of the grout on the floor — she and her husband only recently bought the house. Then, there were problems with the plumbing in the bathoom — so bad that it looks like they are going to have to renovate it to the studs. Boo hoo. Here’s how she describes the colors of the tile, which seem to be capturing pretty well on my computer monitor; Laura says:

The tile in the bathroom is what we’ve called “oatmeal” due to the flecks that are in the lighter-colored tile, and “mocha” since the brown is the color of chocolate milk.

Thank you, Laura, for providing these photos (readers should know that I tortured her to get the angles I wanted) — you did a great job. I think the colors are just lovely.

Where to get octagon-and-dot floor tiles in a variety of colors:

• My first go-to is World of Tile. In photos from my visit last summer, I see that Chippy has beige (?) and green octagons… and I know she has many colors of dots. She may have more octagon colors that I may not have photographed. I tend to think so…
• Universal Ceramic’s Brittany collection includes a variety of colors in octagons, squares and dots. I had a reader email me that they had recently done a bathroom using Universal Ceramic tiles… hmmm, I need to go look.
• Drats, I went looking for more, and basically only found stories already done by me. I think I “own” this search on google…
• If you have landed on this page looking for plain ole octagon and dot floor tile in black-and-white or white-on-white, get thee to a Home Depot or Lowes.