Subway tiles: 11 faces compared by size, finish and joint count

Short answer: all eleven subway tiles here record Ceramic as the material and 8 mm as the thickness, which makes this the only family on the site where every page agrees on both. What separates them is the face — six flat, five wave — and the size. Subway carries far more joint than anything else in this catalogue: 16.7 m per square metre at 75 × 300 mm, against 3.3 m for a 600 × 600 mm tile. None of the eleven records a slip classification.

1. Eleven pages, one material, one thickness

Every one of these pages records Material as Ceramic and Thickness as 8 mm. That is unusual here. The six in the stone-look family, the five in the travertine-look family and the six in the concrete-look family all record Porcelain; the fourteen in the marble-look family record Material as Not specified and so cannot be compared on that row at all. This is the only shelf on the site where the material row is both filled in and the same on every page.

What this guide will not do is rank ceramic against porcelain. That is a comparison about absorption and body, and this site holds no test data for these tiles that would support making it — the pages record a material name and nothing further. What to confirm before choosing lists the rows worth raising before you order, and the checklist for your tiler covers who is in a position to answer a question about a particular wall.

2. Six flat faces and five wave faces

The Style row splits this family cleanly. Six pages read Subway: Studio Flat Subway Tile, Studio Chalk Subway Tile, Studio Linen Subway Tile, Studio Greige Subway Tile, Studio Charcoal Subway Tile and Studio Ink Subway Tile. Five read Subway, Wave, and their own opening lines say what that means: Studio Crest Wave Subway Tile is one “where both the face and the edges undulate, giving a laid wall a hand-formed line”; Studio Ink Wave Subway Tile has “a rippled face, so the gloss breaks into highlights rather than a flat sheet”; and Studio Sage Wave Subway Tile “catches light unevenly, the way handmade glaze does”.

A wave face changes what a wall does with light, not what it costs you in joint — the two wave sizes are the same as the flat ones, so the counts in the table are identical down each size group. The eight layouts is the companion to this page: it takes the same tiles and asks how they are set out rather than how they differ.

3. The joint number here is the largest in the catalogue

This is the figure worth carrying away. At 75 × 300 mm a square metre holds 44.44 pieces and 16.7 m of joint. At 100 × 300 mm it holds 33.33 pieces and 13.3 m. For comparison, the same square metre in 600 × 600 mm — the size most of the floor-format tiles on this site are recorded in — holds 3.3 m. A subway wall carries roughly five times the joint length of a large-format surface covering the same area.

Joint length is the part of a finished surface that is not tile, so it is also the part that carries the grout colour, and at 16.7 m per square metre it is a large part. Choosing that colour from a dried sample joint rather than a chart is worth more here than anywhere else in this catalogue. How to compare tile scale runs the arithmetic across the other families, and the measuring guide covers what to do with a square-metre figure once you have one.

4. Two sizes, and the wider one takes a fifth off the joints

Nine of the eleven are recorded at 75 × 300 mm. Two — Studio Chalk Subway Tile and Studio Linen Subway Tile — are recorded at 100 × 300 mm, and both are white. Going from 75 to 100 mm drops the count from 44.44 pieces to 33.33 and the joint from 16.7 m to 13.3 m, about a fifth less line in the same area. Their own pages put it in one phrase each: Chalk is “in the wider 100 × 300 format, for fewer grout lines across a wall”, and Linen is the same format “for a flatter, calmer wall”.

If the wider format matters to you and you want a colour other than white, the eleven do not offer it — that is a gap in what is recorded here, not a comment on what exists.

5. The widest colour range on the site

Five colour rows across eleven tiles, more than any other family here. Four record White, two record Grey, two record Black, one records Charcoal — and one records Green, which is Studio Sage Wave Subway Tile and the only tile in this catalogue with that row.

The colour row is a family, not a shade, and the four whites are the clearest case: they share a row and read differently on the wall, because two are gloss, one is matt and one is supplied in either. Two white tiles that look the same works through exactly that problem, and comparing samples at home is the only way to settle it in the room the tile is going into.

6. What the eleven leave blank

Three things, and they are worth knowing before you order. No slip classification is recorded on any of the eleven — the specification row reads Not specified and the description list carries nothing either, so this site is not holding a figure for them and cannot repeat one. Box coverage and quantity read Not specified on all eleven, which stops a square metre figure from becoming an order without asking. And one page, Studio Flat Subway Tile, records a finish family — “Gloss or matt” — rather than a single finish, because that tile is supplied in both; the other ten commit to one.

What a quote should list covers the rest of the line items to get in writing, and what to do if the delivery is wrong covers the case where what arrives does not match the answer you were given.

Questions people ask

Are these ceramic or porcelain?

Ceramic. All eleven record it in the Material row, and it is the only family on this site where that row is the same on every page. The tiles in porcelain tiles are a different set. This guide does not rank the two: that comparison rests on test figures this site does not hold for these tiles.

Why does one of them say “Gloss or matt” instead of a finish?

Because Studio Flat Subway Tile is supplied in both and its page records a finish family rather than committing to one. The other ten record a single finish — nine gloss and one matt, Studio Linen Subway Tile. If you need a specific one of the two, how this range writes a finish explains what each wording on a page does and does not settle.

Does a gloss or wave face change how much grout I will see?

No. Joint length per square metre is set by the size of the tile and nothing else, so every 75 × 300 mm tile here — flat or wave, gloss or matt, white or black — comes to the same 16.7 m. What the face changes is how light sits on the wall between those lines. The only lever on the number itself is the wider 100 × 300 format, and the layout you choose, which the eight layouts sets out.

Where these numbers come from

Checked on 9 September 2026. Every size, finish, colour row, material row, thickness and face description above is read from the product page it links to; where a page records nothing, this guide says so rather than supplying a value. The two counts are arithmetic, not measurements: pieces per square metre is 1 ÷ (width × height), and joint length per square metre is the tile perimeter ÷ (2 × area), because each joint is shared between two tiles and so each tile contributes half of its own perimeter. A figure is rounded once, at the end.

Related guides: Subway tile layouts: 8 patterns, Kitchen splashback tiles: 9 formats compared, Small bathroom wall tiles, Concrete-look tiles: 6 faces compared, Terrazzo-look tiles: 5 faces compared and where to start. The whole shelf is in subway tiles.