Laundry tile ideas: where the splashback stops, what to check for the floor, and six pairings

Short answer: A laundry is usually tiled in two places, the splashback behind the tub and bench and the floor, and sometimes a third: the whole wall behind the machines. Settle where the splashback stops first, because that line sets the area and the box count. The building code's housing rules ask for a water-resistant laundry floor and a water-resistant wall to at least 150 mm above a tub that sits within 75 mm of it, and tiles laid on one of the substrates the code lists are one way it accepts. On one assumed 1.8 m laundry bench, a 600 mm splashback is 1.08 m²: two boxes of a 75 × 300 mm subway tile, or one box of a 100 × 300 mm tile with a 10 per cent allowance (two at 15 per cent).

This page works through those decisions with the tiles on this site, using the sizes, finishes and box contents recorded on their product pages, and the laundry advice two Australian tile retailers publish.

1. What the building code says about a laundry

For houses, the Australian Building Codes Board's Housing Provisions deal with laundries in clause 10.2.5, "Other areas". The clause reads the same in NCC 2022 and NCC 2025:

• For walls next to a sink, basin or laundry tub: "Walls must be water resistant to a height of not less than 150 mm above the vessel, for the extent of the vessel, where the vessel is within 75 mm of a wall."
• Wall junctions where a vessel is fixed to a wall must be waterproof, and so must tap and spout penetrations "where they occur in surfaces required to be waterproof or water resistant".
• For laundries and WCs: "The floor of the room must be water resistant." Wall/floor junctions must be water resistant too, and where a flashing is used its horizontal leg must be at least 40 mm.

Clause 10.2.10 of the same Part lists the surface materials the code deems water resistant. Tiles are on the list for walls and for floors, when they are laid over one of the substrates listed in clause 10.2.9. Which substrate and system your laundry has is for the builder, waterproofer and certifier.

The 150 mm is a minimum for the wall behind the tub, not a design height: a splashback that runs to the underside of the overhead cupboards is four times that. Apartments are covered by a different volume of the code, and states adopt editions on their own dates, so check which NCC edition applies and keep the paperwork listed in wet areas: which documents to ask your waterproofer for.

2. The splashback: where it stops

A laundry splashback usually stops at one of four lines:

• The underside of the overhead cupboards. The tile fills the gap between bench and cupboards. 600 mm is a common gap and the one used in the sums below; measure yours.
• A shelf. With open shelving instead of cupboards, the tile can stop at the shelf or carry on past it.
• The ceiling. With no upper joinery, the whole wall above the bench is tiled and there is no top edge to finish.
• The whole wall, floor to ceiling. Where the machines stand side by side under the bench, or stacked in a tall cabinet, some laundries tile the full wall so no painted plaster is left between tile and appliance.

Whichever line you choose, count the courses from the benchtop so the top course is a whole tile. Kitchen wall tiles: how high to tile works through where 75 mm and 100 mm courses land at 600 mm and above, with the joints counted in, and the arithmetic is the same in a laundry.

Buildmat, a Melbourne supplier, adds two lines lower down the wall: extending the floor tile slightly up the wall as a neat base that also protects from mop splashes, and a strip of patterned tile just above the skirting as a small feature.

3. Splashback tiles here: twelve wall tiles

The wall tiles collection has twelve members: eleven ceramic subway tiles and one larger wall tile. Their product pages record these sizes, finishes and boxes:

The colours run from white (Flat, Wave, Crest Wave, Chalk, Linen, Pure White) through pale sage and pale grey (Sage Wave, Cloud Wave) and a warm mid-grey (Greige) to charcoal and black (Charcoal, Ink, Ink Wave). The wave tiles have a rippled face, so a gloss splashback breaks into highlights rather than one flat reflection; the flat tiles give a calmer wall. Subway tiles: 11 faces compared sets them side by side. Buildmat calls glossy white tiles a good option for small laundry splashbacks and suggests keeping darker tones as accents, such as a navy splashback or charcoal grout with white tiles.

On a short laundry wall the pattern decides the cuts. A brick bond, the classic subway wall, puts half tiles at alternate ends of each course. A vertical stack is nominally two 300 mm tiles high on a 600 mm splashback, with one horizontal joint and no horizontal cuts; the joint adds about 2 mm, which the tiler takes up in the setting-out. A 45° herringbone cuts every edge at an angle, the most cutting of the eight patterns. Subway tile layouts: 8 patterns shows each one, and grout colour covers the joint: at a 2 mm joint it is about 3.3 per cent of a 75 × 300 mm wall, but 16.7 m of line per square metre, so its colour decides how strongly the grid reads.

A mosaic instead. The Tile Collective, a Queensland tile retailer, suggests a herringbone, kit kat or hexagon splashback as the way to bring pattern into a laundry, and calls the laundry a good place to try bolder tiles than you would choose for a kitchen or bathroom. In the mosaics here those are the three herringbone mosaics, Studio White Finger in the kit kat collection, and the two hexagon mosaics. Mosaics are sold by the sheet rather than the box; section 6 counts a laundry splashback in sheets.

4. The floor: what the product pages record

A product page here has no row saying wall or floor, which wall tiles vs floor tiles explains. What a page does record is a slip class from the supplier's documentation. Of the 60 tiles on the site, 36 record one: P2 on ten, P3 on twenty-three and P5 on three. All 36 are porcelain. The twelve wall tiles and the twelve mosaics record none.

Retailers' laundry guides lean towards a matt floor. Buildmat writes "For floors, go with matte tiles for grip", and The Tile Collective says matt tiles suit floors, giving slip resistance and less glare as its reasons. A matt finish is not a slip class, though. The class is a separate reference figure from the supplier, and every one of the 36 carries the note to confirm it for the intended application. The building code's slip table for houses covers stair treads, ramps and landing edges, not laundry floors. So take the product name, the class as recorded, and whether the laundry floor will be wet or dry to your tiler or certifier; tile slip ratings: what P3 means lists every tile and its class.

On size, Buildmat suggests large formats such as 600 × 600 mm for small laundry floors because they reduce grout lines, and terrazzo-look tiles for texture. Thirty-four of the 36 come in 600 × 600 mm, and in that size every one is boxed at 4 pieces, 1.44 m² and 30 kg; the other two, Pietra Vela and Pietra Vela Fluted, are 600 × 1200 mm only. On the 1.8 × 1.6 m floor in section 6, a 600 × 600 mm tile sets out as nine positions, with one row cut to about 400 mm, from three boxes of four. Where the laundry flows into another room, Buildmat suggests matching the same floor tile, or one that complements the kitchen floor.

5. Six laundry pairings from the range

The Tile Collective pairs a glossy splashback with a light matt or honed floor. Each pairing below puts one of the wall tiles here with a matt 600 × 600 mm porcelain tile that records P3. Whether that tile suits your floor is for your tiler and certifier. The colour and surface words are from the product pages; the pairing notes are ours. Colour shifts between screens, so order a sample of both before deciding.

Splashback	Matt porcelain, P3 recorded	Why they sit together
Studio Sage Wave, brick bond	Haven Fine White, terrazzo look	A pale sage with a rippled glaze over a fine-grain white terrazzo look: texture on both surfaces, colour on the wall only.
Studio Chalk, vertical stack	Quarry Ash, concrete look	White gloss 100 × 300 mm stood upright over a light ash-grey with pale aggregate. Buildmat suggests vertical stacking to draw the eye up.
Studio Ink Wave, brick bond	Urban Pearl, concrete look	A black rippled gloss over a light concrete look: the strongest contrast of the six. Buildmat suggests using darker tones as accents, a navy splashback being its example.
Studio Greige, brick bond	Coastal Dune, travertine look	A warm mid-grey that its product page says sits quietly against timber and brass, over a warm travertine look.
Studio Pure White, stood upright	Haven Grey, terrazzo look	One course of 300 × 600 mm fills a 600 mm splashback with no horizontal joint, so the large pale aggregate of the floor carries the pattern.
Studio White Herringbone, mosaic	Quarry Sand, concrete look	The pattern goes on the splashback; a warm sand-toned concrete look with fine speckle stays quiet under it.

6. How many tiles for one laundry

The figures below come from one assumed laundry. The dimensions are chosen so the arithmetic is easy to follow; substitute your own.

• A bench and tub run 1.8 m long, with overhead cupboards 600 mm above the bench.
• A floor 1.8 m × 1.6 m.
• A 10 per cent allowance on each surface. This is an assumption, not a recommendation; tile wastage by pattern, size and room sets out what brands, retailers and a tiler publish, and your tiler sets the real figure.

The order of the sum is: net area, add the allowance in square metres, divide by what one box or sheet covers, then round up once.

Two rows sit close to the rounding. In the 100 × 300 mm row, one box leaves only 0.012 m² spare; at 15 per cent the same splashback needs 1.242 m² and two boxes. The herringbone mosaic goes from 14 sheets to 15 at 15 per cent, and 15 per cent is the figure how many tiles do I need? gives as common for herringbone layouts. Run the sum at the figure your tiler gives you; the tile calculator does the division for you.

Questions people ask

How high should a laundry splashback be?

The building code's minimum for houses is a water-resistant wall to 150 mm above a tub within 75 mm of the wall. The tiled height is a design choice above that: commonly to the underside of the overhead cupboards, to a shelf, or to the ceiling where there is no upper joinery.

Do you tile behind the washing machine?

Where the machine sits under the bench, the splashback above the bench covers the wall people see. Tiling the full wall behind the machine is a design choice that leaves no painted strip between tile and appliance. What the wall needs under the tile is for the builder and certifier.

Can you use mosaic tiles in a laundry?

On the splashback, The Tile Collective suggests herringbone, kit kat and hexagon mosaics. The mosaics here record no slip class, so for a floor take that fact to your tiler or certifier.

What tiles are used on laundry floors?

Buildmat says "For floors, go with matte tiles for grip", and The Tile Collective says matt tiles suit floors for slip resistance and less glare. On this site, 36 porcelain tiles record a slip class (P2, P3 or P5) as a reference figure to confirm for the intended use. Take the class to your tiler or certifier; the product page does not say whether a tile suits a laundry floor.

Where these facts come from

Sizes, finishes, profiles, box and sheet contents, product descriptions and slip classes come from the product pages on this site, read on 23 October 2026. The code text is quoted from clauses 10.2.5 and 10.2.10 of the ABCB Housing Provisions, NCC 2022 and NCC 2025, read on 23 October 2026. The laundry tiling advice is attributed in the text to Buildmat and The Tile Collective, both read on 23 October 2026. The tile counts are arithmetic on the recorded coverage with the stated allowance.

References

• Australian Building Codes Board, NCC 2025 Housing Provisions, Part 10.2 Wet area waterproofing, accessed 23 October 2026. The National Construction Code is provided by the ABCB under the CC BY 4.0 licence.
• Australian Building Codes Board, NCC 2022 Housing Provisions, Part 10.2 Wet area waterproofing, accessed 23 October 2026
• The Tile Collective, How to choose tiles for your laundry room, accessed 23 October 2026
• Buildmat, Small laundry room tile ideas, accessed 23 October 2026

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