The trouble with planning a room weeks before it even exists is that you have too much time to change your mind. It’s a bit like smugly doing all your Christmas shopping months in advance and then suddenly discovering “just one more” brilliant thing. And then another. And as the shops keep wheeling out more and more stuff, you end up spending twice as much as you would have done if you had just left it all to the last minute and done a bit of panic-buying.
Happily I haven’t spent any actual money yet, but the quest for the bathroom tiles goes on. I received the samples of the Topps Tiles last week and while I still think they’re very pretty there is a little too much terracotta clay visible round the edges for what I’m looking for. The walls will be painted in gloss paint so the tiles need to be a little less rustic than these.
Enter Marrakech Design. Some of you will recognise the top picture which appears in full page in many of the interiors magazines. I have ripped it out I can’t tell you how many times and then I lose it and can never remember the name of the company. Finally I found it in an old copy of Elle Deco in a pile of stuff under the desk in the spareroom and this is definitely what I want in there. With navy blue gloss walls. Definitely Maybe.
The company is Swedish but they ship to the UK twice a week so there’s no problem with sourcing. The ones I want were created as part of a collaboration with a firm of Swedish architects called Claesson Koivisto Rune and, as well as several different colourways, can be laid in several different ways to create different patterns. This range, Casa, won an Elle Deco International Design award in 2013.
You might prefer Dandelion, Stone or Moonrise. So might I by the time it comes to actually hand over the money. They’re about £120 a sq m by the way but I may only have a few as a splashback behind the basin and bath so hopefully won’t be bankrupting myself. I’d love a whole wall but I think they will look great against the navy gloss wall so there’s no need to have too many. We’ll see.
There’s also a great page on the site which shows you all the different ways to lay them out. It would make a great screensaver.
I love these tiles – ever since seeing them years ago in the Aesop store in Covent Garden. I tracked down the company a few months ago and ordered some samples – they are very helpful. I’m getting the dandelion design for my hallway. My difficulty is sourcing a good tiler as the job is not straight forward (they need to join seamlessly with floorboards in adjoining rooms). The Aesop store got someone over from France to lay theirs, which I suspect is expensive! Can anyone recommend someone (for north London)? Sadly the shop in Sweden don’t have a list of recommended / approved tilers.
Have you looked at mosaic del sur – they have a shop on Colombia Rd in Shoreditch? They have very similar hexagon ones to Marrakech that you can design with your own colour pallet and much cheaper….
I live in Sweden and the shop selling these tiles is down the road. I love them too but just can’t make up mind either. We are building a new house and I feel I must include these tiles somewhere. They need to be treated for use in a bathroom apparently. I am thinking of a floor. Thanks for your inspirational blog.
Oh how lovely to be able to go and see them in real life before you buy. I really want the navy blue ones but the picture of the individual tiles – in the top picture – marine and bone – look much paler than they do in the lifestyle shot so I’m a bit nervous that I will pay for them, have them shipped and then find they aren’t a dark enough blue. They will look great on a floor – let us know which ones you choose.
Come and have a look at mine Kate, I’d love to show you. I went through the exact same dilemma about Marine or Bone when I was ordering them for my bathroom last summer. I really wanted dark blue and tried to pin down the colour to a Pantone but it got so complicated – summer holidays/different Pantone books – I just had to take a chance. When they arrived they weren’t what I expected and I was so disappointed that I would have sent them back if it wasn’t so expensive to ship. So I just had to lay them and hope I changed my mind and guess what – I did! I absolutely loved them the second they went down.
I remember asking Marrakech if there was anywhere I could see them in London before ordering but they just pointed me to their ‘readers photos’ page on the website.
I worked out in the end that they use the word marine to describe a dark blue whereas as I think of it as as having green in it, leaning towards dark turquoise. The people at Marrakech were lovely so even though it sort of went wrong they were just so nice to deal with.
Would it help if I went to the shop and took pics and sent them?
Funnily enough( me buying British from Sweden and you doing the opposite) I just found some tiles I really like at Fired Earth.
Ive just seen this message – this would be an enormous help thank you! You can email them to [email protected]. If you were passing and remembered to do that, that would be amazing thank you. Fired Earth tiles are also lovely.